


The White Knight

by EllenRipley



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Heavy Angst, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 58,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllenRipley/pseuds/EllenRipley
Summary: Jackie was always looking for a fairy tale ending and Hyde never believed in such a thing.





	1. gloomy

Jacqueline Dufort stared at her reflection in the hip to ceiling mirror. It took up the entire alcove carved out behind the dual sink vanity in her master bathroom. She moved her face in closer to the mirror, studying her reflection with an intensity meant to find any flaws in her make up. She pulled back from the inspection mollified. No wrinkles; no creases in her lipstick; her eyeliner was flawless; and the contouring around her nose and eyes kept the soft purple bags of stress hidden well.

Satisfied with what she had come to think of as her “war paint,” she struck a pose in the new dress her husband had purchased for her. It was a red silk monstrosity with puffy sleeves to her elbows, which tapered down to a three-quarter sleeve. She hated the dress, but since her husband had bought it and had indicated that she needed to wear it, she knew she had no choice. Unable to figure out how to get her gorgeous brunette curls to match the dress, she had chosen a simple and elegant style.

It looked okay. She was showing off the teardrop diamond pendant that dropped just above her cleavage. The matching two-carat diamond teardrop earrings glittered against the dark backdrop of her low chignon. The heavy engagement ring with matching diamond and gold wedding band all matched. The diamond encrusted bracelet and watch on her left wrist seemed to set off the entire ensemble. She looked like she had stepped straight out of a fashion magazine but she had no satisfaction in that knowledge.

As she looked at herself in the mirror, she felt empty and worthless. The person she had been a few years ago would gape at this being in front of her in horror. She was not the same young woman who had come shiny-eyed and hopeful to become the actress she knew she could be. Jackie Burkhart was gone and dead. Jacqueline Dufort stood in her place, disgusted with what she had become. She had it all; everything she had hoped for but she was far from happy.

She finally understood the phrase, _careful what you wish for._

There was a tense knock on the locked bathroom door. She hurried over and twisted the lock quietly before demurely calling, “Come in.” She positioned herself in front of the mirror again, staring vapidly at the image before her.

“What the hell is taking so damn long in here, Jacqueline?” Nickolas demanded. There was a tenseness in his shoulders and his hands were tight fists. He was wearing a simple black tux with elegant lines and a red bow tie to match her dress.

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “I just wanted to make sure I looked perfect for you, honey,” she simpered sweetly. The tension in his shoulders dropped and she continued. “I would never want to embarrass you among your business partners. I’m almost done, I promise, and then we can make our perfect entrance.”

He studied his wife carefully, making sure that every hair was in place and every piece of jewelry accented the image he was trying to pull off: _this is mine; see how well I provide for it?_ His expression softened, pleased with what he was seeing. “Of course you do, princess,” he said his deep voice sending shivers up and down her spine. “Two minutes and then we’ll go down to greet our guests.” She beamed up at him as he slid the bathroom door closed.

The smile fell off her face as soon as the door was closed and she had turned back to her image. She stared at the image of who she had become and wanted nothing more than to slam her fists into the mirror in front of her over and over again. She wanted to pound on the slick surface until it cracked into a thousand pieces just as surely as she herself would crack one day.

She felt tears in her eyes and widened her eyes, demanding that the tears disappear. She reached out to grab a tissue but her hand went to the drawer where she kept her make up brushes lined up like perfect little soldiers. As if on auto pilot, her fingers dug up the lining of the drawer carefully and then slid beneath, pulling out a fragment of a newspaper article, laminated.

She looked down at the article, which was only three inches long. Her name bounced up at her before she looked at the picture of the man the article was about. _Jack Burkhart_ , the obituary read in large block letters across the top, right next to a picture of him from when he was still on the city council. She stroked his politician’s face and studied the dates again.

Mrs. Forman had kindly mailed the obituary to the address of her old apartment. Somehow, like magic, it had managed to find its way to her new home.

She had cut that part of her life out as much as possible, only telling her husband that the life in Point Place she had lived before she moved to California was long and dead. Now it mostly was. With the news that her father had died four months ago, she had felt another link to her childhood, her teenage years shattered. She hadn’t been grieving for the absentee father who had gone to jail because of his own poor business decisions; she had grieved instead for the loss of a life that she had once dreamed so much of.

When she had asked Nick if they could go and visit his grave, he had laughed in her face. He had important business to take care of that didn’t allow frittering their time away in small, out of the way places. She understood why he had denied her request to go especially since he was such a busy man, but it wounded her in a way that she hadn’t actually been expecting. She had thought she would be relieved at the refusal.

What she hadn’t been expecting was the fierce overwhelming need to hear Mrs. Forman’s distinctive laugh, smell the scent of pot lingering amid the moist air of the basement, or hear Mr. Forman refer to her as the “Loud One.” She hadn’t been expecting the desire to hear Donna preach feminist policies at her, Fez’s desire to see her boobs, Kelso crying about his eye, or Eric shouting about the _Star Wars_ franchise. But above all else, the one person she wanted to see the most was the one person she had run away from over three years before.

She slid the article back beneath the lining and hid the cut she had made in the liner with one of her foundation brushes. She still felt like she might cry. Instead of allowing her makeup to be ruined and to have Nick start off his evening in a sour mood, she pinched her cheeks hard to bring blood into them. She studied her reflection again and thought that she would be okay to meet and greet. After all, Nick had invited very important guests.

 

  
Steven Hyde stared mindlessly at the television in front of him, trying to remember when his life had turned so bleak. He thought that he had looked forward to promises of a future that wasn’t some heart breaking redo of what he had lived with his alcoholic mother. But there he was, sitting by himself in an unclean apartment staring at whatever was on at this hour. It felt like the time he had spent living with Forman in his basement had been a dream sometimes. He couldn’t remember the last time he didn’t hate himself.

He looked down at the nearly empty beer can with a grimace. He was no better than his mother or his stepfather. He was reliving the fantasy of their lives over and over again, every night. He could feel it pounding at him like a moment of failure, a pinpoint second in time when he could have gone a different way. But he had destroyed himself so thoroughly after he had fucked everything up ten ways to Sunday that he couldn’t even imagine how to fix the problem. Or even if he wanted to fix the problem.

Maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad.

He had a few things going for him that his stepfather hadn’t, though: he felt that he was at least a functional alcoholic. And he knew when he was climbing too far into the bottle because he tapered off to switch back to the goddess that was Mary-Jane. He was pretty sure that he could quit whenever he wanted to, but he never seemed to want to.

When the fuck had he gotten to be so pathetic?

The knock on the door pulled him out of his introspection. He was grateful. It seemed like more and more he spent his time getting drunk or high not to keep the DTs away, but to stop himself from thinking about what a massive failure he had turned out to be. He had begun drinking himself to sleep to keep the pity away. Sometimes he drank so hard to silence the recriminations in his head. It was like every conspiracy theory he had ever spouted only about himself.

He opened the door and found Eric and Donna waiting impatiently. He stared at the two of them, trying to remember the last time he had spoken with them. Were they staring at him like that because he had, yet again, forgotten to meet them somewhere? They were always trying to get him to leave his shithole of an apartment and more and more, he was having a hard time remembering why he tried. “What?” He demanded, grateful his glasses hid the bloody sclera of his eyes.

“We’ve been waiting at the Hub for an hour, dude,” Eric sniped. He stormed passed his best friend and stared at the hovel Hyde called home. He could remember being happy that Hyde was moving out of his parents’ basement, thrilled that his best friend was back and in action. What he had found was his best friend sliding deeper and deeper into himself, slowing drinking himself to death.

His mother was worried about Hyde and he, frankly, was too. He couldn’t remember the last time Hyde had actively been a member of their group. Eric came over more often than not to make sure he was eating and to make sure he hadn’t choked on his own vomit after drinking himself into a stupor. He knew his mom came over twice a week while Hyde was barely functioning at Grooves to clean up the apartment. He wasn’t even sure Hyde noticed.

Donna was torn between her age-old friendship with the caustic nut and the need to distance herself for when he finally wound up killing herself. She didn’t think she could handle his death. She wanted to be there for him, to help him out of the rut he had been in since he had chased Jackie off to who knew where.

She had forgiven him for chasing her away and finally forgiven herself for being a horrible best friend to Jackie before she had fled the scene, never to be heard from again. Sometimes, in her head, she made up stories about where Jackie wound up, hoping she was a happy princess, living with the unicorns.

But at the end of the day, Donna couldn’t sit around and watch him kill himself one drink at a time. She was always happy when she came over with Eric to find him high as a kite. At least that meant that he had stopped subconsciously trying to kill himself. At least that meant that the Hyde she loved like a brother was somewhere underneath those hidden eyes. But more and more it felt like that Hyde was dead and gone, buried beneath the stone cold alcoholic he was becoming.

“I’m sorry,” Hyde said finally. “I forgot.” He looked at the two of them bewildered. He couldn’t remember what day it was. Did he go to work today? He looked around for a calendar before he stopped. His head was starting to pound. He sat down on the couch heavily, burying his head in his hands. “I’m such a mess; why do you bother?” He muttered to Eric, but more to himself.

“You’re like my brother,” Eric said quietly sitting down beside him. Donna looked around and decided to stay standing. She wasn’t sure what sort of diseases could be lurking around in this shit hole. “I’m here, buddy.”

Hyde sighed and looked up at his best friend, then up at Donna. “You’re such a girl, Forman,” he snorted before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he passed out.


	2. call it pretending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyde is trying to get his life back together; Jackie doesn't know where to start.

Hyde stared at Mrs. Forman as she bustled around the pitiful little apartment, throwing everything away. She was singing and dancing to herself, looking like she was having the time of her life. He wasn’t sure when he had agreed to moving back in with the Formans and he was pretty sure that it had not been his idea. But between the slow and painful process of sobering up, he hadn’t thought to ask anyone what was happening.

It was almost like he had woken up from a coma and this bewildering scene was the first day of his recovery. All of his friends were there to help and he was completely mystified as to why. Kelso and Fez were trying to maneuver the couch out of the front door – it wasn’t going well – while Eric and Donna were boxing up the last of his records along with his record player. The entire apartment was echoing with everyone’s labors.

When had he become so lucky?

He had somehow convinced himself that he was alone in the world. He had known in some way that wasn’t true. He had his not-really-adoptive parents the Formans and his not-really-adoptive brother. He had Donna and Fez and Kelso. Even though he had pushed them all away since he had moved out, done every manner of thing to send them running away, they kept coming back.

But at the end of the day, he still told himself that he was the scruffy orphan that no one wanted around. He still felt like he was that person deep down inside who was nothing but yesterday’s trash heap. He had managed to believe that, like his parents before them, they would all up and leave one day.

He had done what he had done in that perverse way of his: hoping he could get them to leave before they wounded him by leaving him behind. If it was his decision that they left his life, then so be it. But they refused to listen, the stubborn jackasses.

He took of his sunglasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t getting sappy, he assured himself. He wasn’t getting all girly like Forman. That was an impossibility. He was a man.

It had been weeks since he had last taken a drink and in those weeks, he had found that he did, in fact, have emotions. He didn’t like them because they showed up at the most inopportune times… like now in the middle of his old living room while he watched his best friends and Mr. and Mrs. Forman move him out of the shit hole he had climbed into.

He had, in his own way, apologized to every single one of them since the first morning when he woke up without the shakes. He had looked around at the off-white walls of his bedroom and actually listened to the birds chirping, the crickets going a million miles a minute, and known that he had to make it up to all of them.

Somehow out of his flowers to Mrs. Forman and Donna, his copious circle time with Eric, Fez, and Kelso, and his helping Mr. Forman find a replacement Corvette, they had managed to talk him out of living on his own just right now. He had agreed but only because he had been bewildered at the idea. How in the world could they know that it had been his solitude more than anything else that had made him realize what a fuck up he was?

Mrs. Forman had taken him back under her wing and made him chocolate chip pancakes, homemade waffles, and enough dinner to feed a hockey team. He found that the TLC she gave him was enough for him to start putting on weight again; he no longer appeared like a skeleton when he looked at himself in the mirror.

Mr. Forman and he spent hours under the hood of the new Corvette with grease on their hands. And when they weren’t doing that, they were both waxing their babies to perfection. The long hours of companionable silence made him feel like he had something to live for. It was almost like there was something more around the corner and Mr. Forman’s quiet direction while they talked over the best way to clean the headers on the Camino was a pep talk to get him back into the swing of living.

Donna, Fez, Kelso, and Eric sat and watched television with him. They took him to the movies and up to the water tower. They had new inside jokes and brought out the old ones. They made fun of Forman for loving _Star Wars_ and made fun of Donna for loving _him_. He frogged Kelso in the arm at every opportunity and they all stared wide-eyed and confused at Fez’s obsession with candy and boobs. It was like they were erasing 1979 – 1982. The only thing missing was Jackie’s loud mouth, calling Donna a lumber jack and bitching about foreigners.

He was on the mend, he knew, but he also knew that Jackie was a part of the mending process. He had fucked up royally. Not only had he assumed the worst of her at every turn, failing to see her love for him, but he had wounded her in every way possible. He had thought that his marrying a stripper and staying married to her would be the end of the road, but it hadn’t been. He and Jackie had fucked up even worse and in the end, he had driven her away much to his own chagrin.

At the time, he couldn’t have stopped himself even though he had wanted to. He was too stuck on himself, but after climbing out of the bottle and waking up that morning to realize what his life had become, he had to face facts. He _did_ care and he would have apologized if he could. But no one seemed to know where Jackie Burkhart had gotten herself off to.

Donna had admitted to him the other day that she had expected her to show up at her father’s funeral, but she hadn’t. There had been no one in the family section, Donna had told him, except for Pam Burkhart, doing her level best to look like she gave a shit about the man she had married for his money. Donna had said, “I wonder if she even knows?”

“Probably,” Hyde had assured her. “She probably just didn’t want to come. I mean, after all, what’s left in Point Place for her? And it’s not like her dad was the best at being a dad.” Donna had nodded, taking the words of wisdom from her friend. She knew that he understood what it was like to have missing parents and knew that he was speaking from his own experience. After all, he, himself, had shunned Bud’s funeral last year.

 

 

Jackie closed her eyes behind her dark aviator glasses. They did their best to keep the world at bay. Her servants knew that if she was at the pool and wearing her glasses, then they were to leave her alone. They assumed – incorrectly – that she was recovering from a hangover. She remembered how many mornings her mother had come downstairs, looking for a bottle of aspirin. Jackie did her dead-level best to take only token sips of champagne and cocktails when they entertained.

Her thoughts drifted back to the obituary clipping up in her drawer. She had realized many years ago that neither of her parents loved her the way that she needed. It had caused some pretty poor decisions in the area of love, but she had managed to make her peace with it. The death of her father hadn’t been a blow, or anything, but more like a paper cut. It was annoying. She just kept thinking that she should at least say good-bye to the creature that had formed a part of her genetic heritage.

But she knew better about herself now. After she had run away from Point Place with her insane idea of becoming a world-famous actress, she had spent a lot of time looking at herself and not liking what she saw staring back at her. She had found that the person from 1979 and early 1980 was a caustic, selfish jackass. She had remembered who she was before boys entered the picture: boisterous, happy, and content with who she was as a person. She couldn’t figure out why she had let herself change.

It had taken her a long time to work back into a semblance that person. She spent careful time on her hair and clothes, of course, because those were fundamental pieces of _who she was_. But she remembered spending weekends at home doing her homework and enjoying the latest Nancy Drew mystery. Her tastes in clothes and mysteries had changed; the person that was Jackie Beulah Burkhart had not.

She had felt confident and capable. She had managed to get through those few months after the auditions had dried up by finding herself. Even though her life had turned on its heel, looking nothing like what she had been hoping it to look like, she had felt happy for the first time in a long time. There had been a bounce in her step and a sparkle in her eye again.

And then she had met Nick Dufort and been completely swept away.

He had come from money with connections all over the country. He had friends and family in Las Vegas, in New York, in Chicago, and in Miami. He traveled all over the world just because he wanted to and he took her with him. She had been dazzled by his glitz and polish.

She had been swept up with the dates to Paris and Milan, the gifts from Tiffany’s and the endless pairs of Manolo Blahniks. She had enjoyed skiing in Aspen with the rest of the rich and famous. She had gone to Studio 54, the Hotel Continental, and walked the red carpet at new movie premiers.

She had finally managed to find her dream man.

It had been a whirlwind romance and before she knew it, she had a rock on her finger and a home to call her own. She had been thrilled to be a wife – finally _someone_ ’s fucking wife – only to realize that she had jumped from one bad decision to another. She had made the same type of decision she had always made when it came to love: jumping in without _thinking_. The person who she had remolded herself to be in those months by herself, the real Jackie Burkhart, was lost amid all of the style and glamor. She had woken up one morning and wondered who the hell was staring back at her.

Nick had changed too in all that time. He had gone from the caring man who brought her flowers and jewelry “just because” to someone who controlled her every moment from waking to sleep. He told her what to wear, who to see, and how to act. He gave her jewelry to go out in so that he could show her off to all his friends. She felt like she was somebody’s trophy, as opposed to being a wife, and the trophy she happened to be was never good enough. She had gotten what she wanted and found that she didn’t actually want it with all the caveats that came along with it.

She had somehow come to know her mother in an intimate way during the time of her marriage. When she had realized what her life looked like only three months after she had said I do and saw the reality of what her mother had married into, she had felt sick to her stomach at the thought. It felt a little too much like a soap opera.

She thought that perhaps, just perhaps, her mother was more like she than Jackie had ever cared to realize. Perhaps Pam Burkhart hadn’t always been selfish and foolish. Maybe once she, too, had hoped and dreamed to become a lucky man’s wife. And she had wound up with Jack Burkhart, who didn’t really love her but only needed her around to look nice on his arm just like Nick needed her to look nice on his arm, so long as the level of nice was up to his standards. At least Jack let Pam decide what to wear.

It was funny: she had never thought to feel pity or sympathy for her mother, but she did. She also knew that the pity and sympathy were probably byproducts of an overactive imagination. She hadn’t spoken to her mother since she had come back and taken her out of the Pinciotti household. She had changed her ways for five minutes before rushing off to Europe on a trip the one year that Jackie needed her mother the most. Her mother had never even known she had moved out before Jackie had left Point Place forever.

Jackie winced and rolled onto her back, making sure to be extra careful to tan evenly on each side. Nick was taking her out to meet a new client and she had to look her best.

She remembered when looking her best was wearing a cute pair of shoes and a nice sundress with some nice earrings. She remembered when her makeup didn’t _have_ to be perfect because it was a necessity, a requirement, but because she _wanted_ it to be that way. It seemed like those days were long since passed.

She wanted to go home, she had realized one morning as she stared at the stranger’s face in the mirror. When the obituary had shown up in the mail, it had been like an omen that now was the time to go home.

Nick had rolled his eyes when she brought it up before brushing off her request. When she had opened up her mouth to protest his hard no, he had shot her a look that had her mouth shutting tightly against whatever she had thought to say. He had been dead-set against such an idea, reminding her _repeatedly_ that she had _assured_ him that her life back in Point Place was dead, completely. She had dropped the subject, but felt the ache deep inside.

She wanted to go home.

She realized that she was crying with the loss of her home, her youth, and her friends. She missed Donna. She missed Eric. She missed Michael. She missed Fez. She wasn’t sure, but maybe somewhere in all of that she even missed Hyde.

They had left things broken and bruised, but after the last three years, she had realized how foolish she had been to run away. She should have stayed, stuck it out even with her heart broken. Instead, she had run off and wound up with everything she could ever hope for… and a lifetime of misery.


	3. suzie q

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackie decides to take a trip back home.

As the landing gear touched down on the runway in Kenosha, Jackie reassured herself for the hundredth time that everything was going to be all right. When she had decided that she would fly to Kenosha while Nick was flying from one business trip to another, she had felt like she was taking control over her life. The nagging feeling of not saying farewell to her father had torn her down to the point where she couldn’t figure out why she got out of bed in the morning anymore.

Before she had realized what she was doing, she had called Mrs. Forman and made the plan to meet up for a day. Mrs. Forman had crowed with joy, happy that her long lost duckling was finally coming home even if it was for only a day. Jackie had made sure to tell the older woman that she wasn’t staying, that she wasn’t coming home, and that this was just a quick hello-goodbye but the joy she could hear through the phone had eaten away her doubts.

When she had walked up to the counter and told the very nice woman at the desk where she was buying a ticket to, she hadn’t buckled under the knots of anxiety taking root in her stomach. When she had thought she saw one of Nick’s clients in the airport, she had clenched her fists together tightly and told herself she was being foolish. She was going to go to see her father’s grave and no amount of panic was going to stop her.

Jackie scooted to the edge of her seat, demurely untangling her sweat-soaked slip and skirt from her thighs. She hated to fly and hated even more that her insides were a giant ball of worry. No matter how many times she reminded herself that she wasn’t really doing anything foolish, it only seemed to make the anxiety in her stomach act up.

She assured herself that she was able to take a trip wherever she wanted now and again. She had been an absolute dream at the dinner Nick had hosted for friends and family. She had made sure that the food was perfect and exactly what he expected; her makeup and behavior had been precise. She hadn’t angered her husband in weeks. Besides, Nick had very kindly let her take a trip without him to New York for Fashion Week and had sweetly let her spend a week in Europe to be pampered at a spa.

But she knew that if he found out where she had gone before their planned meeting in Miami over the weekend, there would be hell to pay. That was why she hadn’t told anyone where she was going; why she hadn’t taken a car service but had taken a cab that had picked her up down the street from their home.

She was probably doing something foolish. She was always doing something foolish, she reminded herself. She bit down on her lip and then quickly stopped, admonishing herself for worrying. She was going to get wrinkles if she kept this up and then Nick would be _really mad_. She sighed and pushed her sunglasses up onto her nose as the flight crew opened the door and the stair ramp was pushed against the side of the plane for the passengers to depart.

She climbed to her feet, feeling her legs shake beneath her. She pulled the small travel case from beneath her seat as she got to her feet. The case was a relic from her youth. It had been the first suitcase she had been given and had stuck it out through all the changes in her life since. It felt like a symbol, a sort of necessary addition to the homecoming.

She was one of the first passengers to the door, glancing into the daylight and the world of her youth. As elegantly and statuesquely as Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn, she slid down the steps. In front of her, she could see a bouncing older woman. Beside her was a stoic older man, rolling his eyes at his wife’s antics.

She was pleased to see that they had not brought anyone along on this trip to pick her up from the airport. Even though she could admit to herself that she missed everyone, she wasn’t sure she could handle seeing them all. She had been grateful to learn that Eric and Donna had classes. Mrs. Forman had carefully not mentioned Hyde.

She gripped her little travel case so tightly that her hand hurt but she refused to let it go. It was almost like a lifeline as she walked toward the couple.

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Forman,” she said her voice soft and toned. She had always been pleased with Red’s nickname for her, the Loud One, but she had broken herself of the brash and crass way her voice rang out. She was a demure, sophisticated woman now and screeching like she was 7 wasn’t going to cut it anymore. “I’m so grateful that you were able to meet me here. I was worried that I would have to take a cab or rely on my mother.”

“It’s no problem, Jackie,” Mrs. Forman gushed before pulling her into the tightest hug. She was pretty sure that Kitty was cracking ribs. She blinked in surprise as the older woman pulled away. She consciously knew that Kitty thought of all of Eric’s friends as her _de facto_ children, but she hadn’t expected the greeting of a Mother Hen reuniting with one of her lost chicks.

For a moment, she wanted to cry but she bit the inside of her lip and offered Mrs. Forman a small smile as she bit hard enough to draw blood. Mr. Forman was eying her suspiciously as though crying women were contagious, like yawns. “Shall we go?” She asked quietly. “I have to be back here in a few hours. I know that doesn’t leave us much time,” she added to Red.

“It’s not a problem, honey,” Kitty assured her again before Red could make some caustic retort. “I’m just so happy to see you! I haven’t heard back from you in so long. I was beginning to think that you had been kidnapped or something!” Kitty kept talking as they walked across the tarmac. “I know that you didn’t want me to tell anyone about where you had gone and I appreciate you letting me know, but you could have at least given me a telephone number! I do know how to keep a secret!”

“She’s right, Jackie,” Red admonished from behind them. Jackie glanced back at him, taking in his appearance through the dark glass of her lenses. “Kitty’s managed to not tell a single one of those dumbasses where you’ve been. You could have given us a phone number. Kitty has been worried since she hadn’t heard from you after she sent the obituary.”

Jackie swallowed loudly. “I am terribly sorry for being so rude, Mrs. Forman. I have no excuse,” she added.

“Well, well,” Kitty said, sounding bewildered by the track of the conversation. “It’s all right, honey. I understand. Things weren’t the greatest for you around here before you left and you needed to get away for a while. I understand needing to get away. I just wish it hadn’t been two whole years!” She bounced on her feet and her distinctive chuckle rolled down Jackie’s spine. She closed her eyes as it comforted her in a way she hadn’t thought possible.

They entered the parking lot and Red steered them towards an older model Toyota. As Kitty walked around to the passenger side, she gave Jackie a gentle pat on the back. Jackie stiffened at the contact, not expecting it. Kitty frowned at her for a moment before moving around the car. “Well, let’s get back home!” She said with forced cheer. “I’ll fill you in on all the gossip, Jackie!”

“Oh,” Jackie said slowly as they climbed into the vehicle. “No thank you, Mrs. Forman. I don’t gossip anymore.”

In silence, they drove back towards Point Place.

 

 

Jackie looked down at the clothes she was wearing. She was surprised by how baggy the T-shirt was. She hadn’t expected to be swimming in it; it used to fit her so well. As she thought about it, she realized that the diet Nick had put her on because he had purchased a dress in a size too small must have finally had an effect. She didn’t know why she was shocked that the T-shirt hadn’t fit as well as she remembered. She wasn’t a teenager anymore, after all.

She fluffed up her hair and then presented herself to Kitty, who was waiting anxiously for her to leave the bathroom. Since she was leaving again in a few hours, she didn’t have enough time to do much more than go to the cemetery before the Formans made the long trip back to the airport. She felt a little bad for putting them out like this, but Mrs. Forman seemed happy to see her and Mr. Forman hadn’t made any comments about it at least… not that Kitty had let him get a word in edgewise on the ride back from the airport.

“Come into the kitchen, dear,” Mrs. Forman said happily. She bounced down the hallway as Jackie followed her quietly. “I have brownies that I made just before we came to get you and we’re not going _anywhere_ until you have at least two.” Red was seated at the table with a cup of coffee and a brownie, his newspaper open while he read.

“Oh, Mrs. Forman, I have missed your brownies!” Jackie gushed before she remembered who she was. She couldn’t very well act like the little girl she had been before she had run away, no matter how much this place felt like home. She straightened her posture and smiled at Kitty. “Thank you very much,” she added.

“I’m just so happy!” Kitty bellowed and hugged her again. “My babies are all finally home. Eric’s home and going to college at the UW, you know? And Donna is going with him, too, and they’re both just happy to be together again. And then Michael is still living in Chicago but he comes down every weekend with Fez and sometimes he brings Betsy—”

Kitty’s eyes widened. “You haven’t seen pictures of that beautiful little girl,” she cried and sped off.

Jackie slid into a chair beside Red, picking at the brownies. She nibbled on a piece before setting the brownies aside. Kitty was back with a stack of pictures. She thrust them on the table and Jackie perused them, gasping at the appropriate parts and murmuring endearments about her god-daughter. She couldn’t remember the last time she had thought about Michael’s little girl with Brooke.

“Anyway, Betsy is just a dear,” Kitty exclaimed. “It’s almost like I have my own grandchild even though she’s not mine.”

“You spoil her enough for her to be,” Red muttered behind his newspaper.

Kitty pretended she didn’t hear him. “And of course, Fez has his own salon in Chicago, did you know? And he’s just loving it because all of the girls at the Playboy mansion come by for him to do their hair. And he’s been hired by them for private functions, you know!”

“That’s just great, Mrs. Forman,” Jackie said.

Kitty nodded. “And of course, Steven just moved back in with us a few months ago.”

Jackie pretended like she wasn’t interested. Maybe if she feigned nonchalance about her ex-boyfriend, she would stop talking? “He was just miserable living on his own anyway and he needed to come home. And he’s been doing very well with Grooves. He’s been taking some classes at the local college, in _business_ ,” she added for emphasis.

“That’s nice, Mrs. Forman,” Jackie interjected appropriately.

Kitty looked down at the brownies in front of the young woman. They were crumbled but it was easy to tell that she hadn’t eaten any of them. “You haven’t touched your brownies, Jackie dear,” Kitty said slowly.

Jackie forced a smile. “I know, but I’m just nervous about going to the cemetery. I wasn’t able to say good-bye to… my father, and I’m not really sure how to react. It seemed very sudden, his death,” she explained nervously.

“Well, of _course_ you’re nervous,” Kitty said, slapping herself in the forehead. “Well, I made sure that Pam wasn’t going to be there so you don’t need to worry about _that_.”

“Thank you,” Jackie said, meaning it.

Kitty prattled on for what seemed like an eternity, explaining to Jackie all of the things her friends had been up to. It sounded to her like they had managed to move on without her with no problems.

She was glad to hear that they were picking up the pieces of their lives, but in her secret heart of hearts, she was also a little jealous. She wondered if any of them worried about her or wondered where she had gone off to. But then again, she wouldn’t have been surprised if they didn’t. She hadn’t exactly left on good terms.

She looked down at the crumbled brownie, staring at the thing from behind her dark glasses. She couldn’t bring herself to take them off. She felt like a fraud and the sunglasses helped to keep her hidden. It was like she could pretend to be the Jackie Burkhart everyone knew and loved if she wore them. By taking them off, she would be revealing the mess she had actually become.

Jackie Burkhart is _not_ a mess, she reminded herself. If she kept telling herself that, she was sure that she would eventually believe it.

Even as she was reminding herself that she was just fine, the door at her back opened and she froze. She felt like her heart began to beat in triple time and she had this intense need to run as quickly as possible. She slowly turned to look over her shoulder, simultaneously worried and excited that Steven would be standing there.

She was almost grateful to see that Donna and Eric were staring at her like she had grown a second head in the time she had been away. She felt a little like she had. They couldn’t seem to picture that the dark haired brunette crumbling brownies between Eric’s parents was the same girl who they had last seen crying as she ran out the basement door after her final clash with her ex-boyfriend. They gaped at her, the arms linked around one another’s waists slowly sliding away from each other.

“Jackie?” Donna crowed first, coming to herself. She was off like a shot and grabbed the little brunette in her arms. Donna was surprised by how slight Jackie felt and the involuntary groan as she hugged her. “Jackie? Where have you been? What are you doing here? Why haven’t we heard from you? Are you okay?” Donna rapid fired questions at her best friend, feeling grateful to know that she was alive.

In her darkest heart, she had always worried that Jackie was actually another statistic: a nameless buried body in the woods somewhere, waiting to be found accidentally one day. To know that she was actually alive was a relief. Then she felt anger simmering below the surface: how _dare_ she just walk back in like the last three years were _nothing_?

“Where the fuck have you been?” Donna shouted pulling away, her expression thunderous. Kitty gasped and Red shot her the darkest look, but she didn’t give a _shit_. She was so beyond angry. How dare her best friend let her think that she was probably dead and buried, murdered on the side of the road? “I thought you were dead!”

“Well, I’m not dead,” Jackie said coolly. “I came to see my father’s grave.”

Instantly, Donna felt like a heel. She looked back at Eric who could tell just how she felt from that simple look. She looked down at the small black shoes that Jackie was wearing to the simple jeans to the Led Zeppelin T-shirt that dwarfed her. “I’m sorry,” Donna said finally. “I’m really, really sorry, Jackie.”

Jackie offered her a small smile. “I know.”

Kitty burst in then. “Well, Jackie. I know that you don’t have a lot of time, so why don’t we just go on down to the cemetery then?”

“Yes, please,” Jackie said running her fingers through her loose curls. She felt like she was riding on a roller coaster and there was no way off.

“I’m going with you,” Donna said with steel in her voice.

Jackie swallowed. She didn’t want Donna to come along, but she couldn’t figure out a polite way to reject the statement. She knew that if Donna climbed in the car with them and went to the cemetery, then there would be questions. She didn’t want to talk to Donna about the life she had chosen in California.

She was pretty sure that she didn’t owe anyone in Point Place anything anymore, least of all an explanation for where she had been and why she had fallen off the face of the earth. But it honestly didn’t feel that way. She felt like she owed Donna an explanation of where she had been and why she had run off without a word. She felt like she owed _all of them_ an explanation, but instead of speaking she bit her lips convulsively.

With a savage bite to her inner cheek, she drew blood and the desire to spill her guts cleared with the coppery taste. She offered Donna a cool smile as they moved in a herd towards the sliding glass doors. She knew she could keep Donna and her questions at bay. If nothing else, the last few years had truly taught her the art of subterfuge.


	4. tombstone shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyde decides he can't let Jackie leave Point Place without talking to her; Jackie just wants to bid farewell to the father who had failed her.

“What are you saying, Forman?” Hyde demanded. He stared at his best friend as though he had been speaking in some uncrackable code for the last two minutes. He was pretty sure that his ears were playing tricks on him again. If he hadn’t known any better, he could have sworn he was drunk. It was the only explanation.

“I. Am. Saying. That. Jackie. Is. Back.” Eric cried while fluttering his hands in the air. “Do. You. Understand. The. Words. Now.”

Hyde felt an ache blossoming across the side of his skull. It felt alarmingly like a hangover. He sighed and cracked his neck, trying to release the pressure in his head. It only seemed to make it worse. His stomach flip flopped at the idea of seeing Jackie again. And in that moment, he knew that he had to go and see her. If nothing else, he had to apologize to her for the horrible things he had done to her. He had to make amends.

He had come a long way since that day when Eric and Donna had shown up, pissed that he had missed another attempt of theirs to breathe life back into him. In the months since that day, he had found out that he missed Jackie. He had found out that he had fucked up beyond all measure with her and that the very least he could do was to honestly and truly apologize to her. It probably wouldn’t help – it was three years too late – but he could at least try to be a better person.

Maybe.

“I have to see her,” Hyde finally decided. It had never really been a debate. The second he had heard Eric say her name, the moment that the words telling him that she was here had passed his lips, he knew. But this solidified it. Saying it aloud almost gave it a life of its own and he was the genie, forced to obey.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, dill-hole,” Eric yelled. “You have to go and see her. And you don’t have a lot of time because apparently she’s getting the hell out of dodge as soon as she’s done saying good-bye to her dad at the cemetery.” He turned to the door as Steven came out from behind his desk.

He made sure that Leo was at the counter, doing what Leo did and made doubly sure that Randy was in the background so as to keep Leo from burning down the store. Randy might not hang out with the gang too much anymore, but he was a really terrific second in command. He had helped him out momentously while Hyde had done his best to die soaked in beer and whiskey. There was no way he could ever repay him. Hyde waved to Randy as he and Eric hurried out the front door without a word.

They climbed into the El Camino with Hyde in the driver’s seat. After the engine began to purr, he just stared at the wall in front of him for a moment. Every second of his life with Jackie was flashing before his eyes. Was this what it was like to die?

“Dude,” Eric interrupted. “Step on it. You don’t have a lot of time.”

“Right,” Hyde said and put the car into reverse. Almost like the car was another part of his body, it maneuvered through the traffic until he was on the road. He could barely think, barely breathe.

He was on his way to say sorry to the one person he had never thought he would get a chance to say it to. He had always thought that he would regret the end of their relationship to his last breath. But now it was like something or someone had given him an opportunity to at least stop stewing in his own self-hate long enough to, maybe, get some absolution.

Even though he knew he didn’t deserve it.

 

 

Jackie stared at the tombstones that surrounded her father. They were easier to take in. She could look at the names of Mary and Leonard Smith without breaking down. But if she looked at the big, inscribed name of Jack Burkhart, she knew she was going to lose the tenuous grasp on her self-control. If she let loose now, there was no telling if she’d ever be able to pick up the pieces again.

She bit the inside of her lip and turned her sunglass framed eyes back to the gravestone. Kitty and Donna were standing beside the Toyota, waiting patiently for her. She looked at the name and then slowly crumpled to her knees. She hadn’t really expected to feel anything at this moment, the second time in her life when she had to face the facts: Daddy wasn’t coming home.

She reached out and traced the etched name.

She had loved her father for years. She had known he was a questionable person with questionable morals. He had done his best to take care of her. He had looked down on Michael, which had turned out to be a good thing. He had bought her everything she wanted. But he had never given her the love and affection she needed. He had been absent on business trips and dealing with “grown up stuff” more than he was willing to spend time with her. It had been okay, though, because she got the boots and the car and the coats and the unicorns she wanted… right?

But now she knew. She had watched what real parents were like with the Formans. She knew that the relationship she had with her father was a farce. He was no better than Steven’s parents. She knew that, but deep down, it had taken her running away from Wisconsin to come to terms with that.

Both of her parents were shitty parents, caught up on thinking more about themselves than the daughter they had brought into the world. They bought her off as best they could, but there were only so many presents a girl could take before she had to face facts: her parents were terrible at being parents.

She felt the tears coursing down her cheeks and realized that she had been crying for a while. Her cheeks were soaked. She felt every emotion for this man surface like a sea beast rising from the depths: love, hate, awe, fear, disgust. They all crowded around in her heart until she thought she would throw up from the overload. She lowered her head onto the cold of the tombstone and hugged it. “I wish,” she whispered through her tears, “you had been the man I needed you to be.”

Maybe a therapist would tell her that the good-bye was a poor one. Maybe she wasn’t moving on like she had hoped. Maybe she was only leaving the wound open and gaping, ready for someone or something else to rip it open further. It didn’t matter. At the end of the day that was the one thing she wanted: she wished he had been the man she needed. Maybe if he had been, she wouldn’t have screwed up so much everywhere else.

She knew, consciously, that she couldn’t blame him for her mistakes. They were her mistakes, after all. But sometimes, she wondered if he had been around even just a little bit more if things would have been different. She used to make up stupid stories in her head about where he was and what he was doing. She lied to herself. She couldn’t anymore, though. She had screwed up, following the same bad example her parents had set in front of her.

Just like Steven.

She began feeling like she was no longer alone with the depth of her own interior. Slowly, she turned her head. Beside her were a pair of jeans and combat boots caked in mud. She stared at them stupidly, feeling her mouth go suddenly dry. Those boots looked disturbingly familiar. They had left a pattern on her heart and now, here they were right after she had been thinking about him almost as if her very thoughts had summoned him.

He knelt down beside her slowly. He was wearing his distinctive sunglasses. Nothing had really changed. His shirt was a band shirt – AC/DC – and he was staring at the cold stone in front of her intensely. She looked at his profile, taking in the hair, his nose, the way his hands were loose against his knees. He was just like she forced herself not to remember. He was everything she had wanted once.

“Hey, Jackie,” Steven said, his voice soft.

“What are you doing here?” She asked in her cool, formal voice. It was the voice she reserved for the staff at home, for the guests at Nick’s parties, and everyone else in her life. It was Zen times a hundred. Carefully cool, cultured but aloof. It was a lie. She wanted to scream.

He looked at her as she spoke, drinking her in. Her hair was just as soft and shiny as he remembered, maybe more so. She looked gaunt, though, like she had missed a couple of strategic meals in the last few years. She was wearing a T-shirt that had haunted him for years. He had always wondered if she had burned the Led Zeppelin T-shirt or if she had thrown it away. It was almost a relief to know that, even after everything he had done to her, she had kept it.

Her eyes were as hidden as his own and after a moment, he reached up and pulled his off. He studied the deep dark lenses of her designer sunglasses, wondering what her mismatched eyes looked like beneath them. Were they brittle with hatred? Were they soft with sadness? Would they forgive him?

“I know that you have to get out of here pretty quickly,” he said quietly. “But I was hoping that we could get a cup of coffee before you left. We could go to the Formans or maybe to the Hub.”

She climbed to her feet very slowly. Hyde watched her before following her example. They squared off at one another. She didn’t seem to be reacting at all to what he had asked. She seemed to be as stiff as a statue. Hyde wondered if this new Jackie was his fault or if his stupidity had maybe only aided to create the creature in front of him. He could feel anxiety gnawing at him. He wanted her to say something, anything.

“I’m sorry,” she said in that formal voice of hers. “I really do not have time to reminisce. I came here to bid farewell to my father.” She turned back to the grave. “Now, if you would excuse me…”

“Sure, right,” Hyde said slowly. He felt like she had punched him in the gut; stomped on his testicles; had caught him with an upper cut right across the jaw. He took a few steps back and off to the side, trying to nurse the ache in his heart like a functional human being instead of a recovering alcoholic. She didn’t owe him anything, of course, but he hadn’t realized how much he had been hoping…

She moved stiffly and then reached out to touch the tombstone again. His eyes flitted over the little brunette who had carved, by force and with his help, a hole in his heart. He studied her posture and her clothes. He wondered what she had been up to.

She knelt down in front of her father’s grave again and reached out to hug the stone. She rested her cheek against it and he could see that her eyes were closed behind the dark glasses. She twitched herself closer and squeezed the stone in her arms.

He watched from behind her, trying to see the woman he had loved in the woman in front of him. She felt like Jackie. She resembled Jackie, but she was not his Jackie. He could sense the changes from the woman he had fallen in love with. This remote, aloof person hugging a tombstone in front of him was not the same woman he had once whispered his secrets to in the dark of night.

He recognized that the knowledge that she had changed destroyed the little quiet place in his heart where he had hoped she would remain the same. He had hoped that no matter what he had done or said to her, she would always be his Jackie. A tiny part of him had always thought that she would forgive him, admit that she loved him still, and come back.

The rational part of his mind – a very small part – reminded himself that he wanted to be her hero again. He remembered the days when she would run over to him, crying over something Michael had done to her or something awful that was occurring in her life. She had always run to _him_ and he missed that. He wanted to be the white knight in shining armor, even if the role had been uncomfortable once. He felt he could fit it better now.

The rest of him was heartbroken all over again. He couldn’t be her white knight. She had moved on. Maybe had even found her own white knight somewhere else. He had never really been comfortable with that part forced on him even though he had somehow managed to mold himself into what she needed somehow.

Who was he, though, to even try to be that person anymore? He was an ex-boyfriend and a shitty ex-boyfriend to boot. He had hurt her worse than Michael ever had. He knew that. But that didn’t stop him from wanting to fix it. That didn’t stop him from wanting her to need him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters at once; don't get used to it. :)


	5. porterville

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyde relives what he did to push Jackie away.

“I really can’t stay any longer, Mrs. Forman,” Jackie assured her as they stood outside in the driveway. She stared down the older woman, hoping that she could convey that this was non-negotiable. Jackie glanced at her discreet, cheap watch on her wrist. “I have appointments back home that I can’t cancel,” she lied.

Kitty looked like she was going to tackle Jackie to the ground and sit on her to keep her from leaving, which was exactly how the older woman felt. She hadn’t had all of her babies around in so long. And here was the wayward child, the one who had run off to California with dreams of being an actress, dreams which had stalled out not that long after she got there.

Kitty had been worried by the change in tone of the letters over the months between Jackie’s arrival in California and when Jackie had stopped responding. There had been a distinctive change from the bubbly “loud mouth,” as Red was so fond of saying, to this… this caricature before her.

This wasn’t the Jackie Burkhart who had practically lived in their home for years. This was some other creature in her place and she was, by golly, going to find out what was going on with her wayward would-be daughter.

“Jackie,” Mrs. Forman said, “you’re exhausted. You were yawning in the car; you need to rest before you head home. Are you sure you really need to leave right now for the airport? Everyone knows that traveling is awful and it’s only made worse when you’re tired!” She glanced into the faces of Donna, Eric, and Steve, looking for someone to back her up on this.

“Look, Jackie, I know it’s been a while but you may as well just give in,” Eric pointed out. He slid a companionable arm around Jackie’s shoulders. Without trying to seem obvious, she slid away from his arm. “You know how my mother is: you may as well just say yes.”

Steven had been watching her intently through the lens of his glasses, but he caught the flicker of unease pass across her face at what Eric and Mrs. Forman were saying. He couldn’t help but ask himself why she didn’t want to stay any longer. Was it become of him? If he had stayed at the store, would she be giving in right now?

She smiled demurely at Eric. “Oh, no,” she said. “I really can’t do that.” She had a time table to keep and she would be damned if this impromptu and ill-advised homecoming was going to mess it all up. “I _have_ to go home. All of my appointments tomorrow can’t be rescheduled. It took me months to get some of them,” she fibbed. She hoped that, faced with the haunting prospect of Appointments, they would back off.

Steven saw Mrs. Forman’s face fall and the white knight that haunted him deep inside turned its attention in her direction. The look of disappointment on his step-mother’s face was too much for him to take. “Oh that’s bull-crap, Jackie,” he finally snapped.

She turned those dark glasses in his direction. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking and he had a sudden understanding of why _she_ had hated his sunglasses so much. He had no fucking clue what was happening in that mind of hers and it was driving him crazy. “You’re Jackie Burkhart. You’ve managed to get into places that have waiting lists miles long and now you’re going to tell us these ‘appointments’ of yours can’t be rescheduled a few days out while you stay with your _family_ who you haven’t seen in years?” he continued.

Mrs. Forman grabbed her hand in hers and began tugging her towards the house, as though it was a done deal.

Jackie glared in Hyde’s direction, not that he could see it. She wanted to slap him. She had carefully planned out how things would go once she got to Point Place and now, everything was going down in flames. She hadn’t meant to see any of her old friends, hadn’t meant to get stuck here, but now she couldn’t think of a legitimate reason why she couldn’t stay. Her excuse about her alleged ticket sounded flimsy even to her own ears.

With a flicker of unease, she tried to find a logistical reason why Steven was wrong, but nothing came to mind. She couldn’t decide if the reason she couldn’t find a clever excuse was because she didn’t want to find one or if because one truly couldn’t be found. Maybe, she thought, it wouldn’t be so bad if she stayed a little longer. She could rent a car and be on the road in a few hours instead.

With a last parting glare, Jackie was pulled into the house by Kitty, who began talking about dinner plans.

Eric and Hyde exchanged a glance while Donna stared after the girl who had once been her best friend. “What’s happened to Jackie?” Donna wondered aloud. “She’s so… cold.”

“Okay, I thought it was just me,” Eric said with an audible sigh of relief. “She’s like a pod person or something.” He stared at where she had been standing, arguing with them about her staying any longer. “Maybe you really did screw her up big time, Hyde.”

“Oh, thanks, Forman,” Hyde snapped. “Like I wasn’t already worried that was the case.” He ran his fingers through his hair. Something was definitely going on with her that was for sure, but who knew what the hell that was? They hadn’t seen her in two years and this could very well be the person that Jackie had become after he had… “Fuck.”

Donna stared at her friend, feeling pity. She was just as bewildered as the rest of them at this cool, aloof Jackie. Every question she had asked her about her life for the last three years had been carefully deflected. It had become obvious that Jackie wasn’t interested in sharing and that hurt. Donna had hated it at the time, but Jackie had used to confide in her _everything_ going on her head. And now it was like pulling teeth just to learn that she had been in California.

“I couldn’t get her to tell me _anything_ about what she’s been up to,” Donna informed them both. “We were in the car for twenty minutes and she didn’t answer a single one of my questions. I know she was in California for at least the last two years, but I can’t find out what she was doing or who she’s been seeing or what job she’s been working. I don’t know _anything_ about the girl who used to tell me I was her best friend.” Donna felt tears in her eyes and stupidly brushed them away.

They began to fall as she stood there with Eric and Hyde, trying to figure out where everything had gone to hell.

She knew she hadn’t been the greatest friend after Hyde had brought home Sam and after she had decided to stay. She knew she had said some things and acted like a fool. But Jackie hadn’t seemed to be upset with her. They had had words about it a few times, but in the end, they were best friends. She had felt bad for how she had treated Jackie in the face of Sam’s arrival, but she had apologized and Jackie had forgiven her.

So why was her friend no longer willing to tell her anything? It was like the Jackie Burkhart she had known and loved, and found obnoxious on more than one occasion, had been replaced by a poorly drawn caricature. She hadn’t heard a single “well Don- _na_ ” on the ride to the cemetery and nothing about lumberjacks.

Hyde stared guiltily in the direction of the kitchen. He couldn’t help but remember the last time they had spoken. It was like a punch in the face all over again. Maybe this cool, automaton of a Jackie really was his fault.

 

 

_Jackie snuggled in closer to him, resting her head against his chest. “You need to get out; you can’t sleep here,” Hyde said coldly as they lay together on his cot. She sat up and stared down at him in confusion, her eyes sleep-filled already. He pushed her up and off of him so that he could sit up and put his pants on._

_“What?” She asked him. They had careful rules in place, of course. He had been married and she was the foolish other woman. The woman who had listened to her heart instead of her common sense. And then Sam had left. She was gone and here they were, ready to get back together. She was hurt and confused, but at the end of the day, she wanted Steven Hyde back. She was willing to do anything to get him back._

_She wanted to sit on his lap in the circle and wanted his hands around her waist; she wanted to sit on the hood of his Camino at the water tower and just stare at the stars; she wanted to make out hot and heavy for hours while their friends came and went; she wanted to snuggle in close while they fell asleep in one another’s arms after making love for hours._

_But the rules stayed in place and she had gone with it. They argued and sniped at each other in front of their friends, but in the dead of night, she came back over and they ground out their frustrations with sex. If that was what she needed to do, continue to be his dirty little secret, then she would do it. She was willing to do anything to get him back and if that meant that they had to keep their reunion quiet, then she would do it. She just needed him back in her life. He completed her in a way that she had never thought possible._

_“I said you need to get out,” he said. His eyes were cold and hard, an ice blue that ate away at her. She looked up at the man who she loved so much that she was willing to debase herself to the lowest level: she was no better than Laurie._

_She swallowed. “But… I thought that we might…” She trailed off, unable to finish what she wanted to say in the face of that glare._

_“Well, you thought wrong,” he said snidely. He knew he was hurting her, but he didn’t dare let himself give vent to his own riotous emotions. If he did, he wasn’t sure what would happen. He knew that he loved Jackie and probably always would, but that was the only definitive thing he knew about their relationship. He had to keep her at a distance, though. They were no good together. This was the only way to satisfy the itches they both wanted to scratch._

_“Steven,” she said slowly. She sat up and wrapped his sheet around her. She looked up at him with watery eyes. “Steven, please don’t make me leave.”_

_“Look, Jackie, get it through your head: all this is between us is two people using each other to get off. We both set rules on this –”_

_“When you were married,” she cut in._

_“—and that hasn’t changed at all,” he continued. “Don’t think that this is your chance to get back in with me, Jackie. You had sex with Michael behind my back—”_

_“—no, I didn’t,” she retorted hotly, climbing to her feet._

_“—and you were only the other woman to me. You were a quick lay when Sam was gone. Now that she’s gone again, where the hell else am I going to find someone I don’t have to sweet talk into sleeping with me?” He could hear that voice in his head, screaming at him to shut up. He was going to fuck this up and push her away. But that was okay because then, she couldn’t hurt him with Michael… again._

_She slapped him hard across the mouth and glared at him. “How dare you speak to me this way? I have done nothing but love and forgive you. I have been there for you when no one else would. I have pushed you and supported you, have sacrificed myself for you and this is how you treat me? How dare you treat me like one of your common whores?”_

_“Get out, Jackie,” he said again._

_She winced at him and hunched herself a little. Hyde tilted his head to watch her as she winced again. She reached down and began gathering her clothes to her, pulling them on while she remained wrapped in his sheet. He watched her, his eyes boring into her coldly. That gibbering idiot in his head was telling him to apologize and to do so quickly because if she stomped out, she wasn’t coming back._

_In a way, he wanted her gone. He wanted to hurt her so much. This whole last year had been hell on earth and he wanted to take it out on her. If he had never bothered to shack up with her in the first place, the pain wouldn’t have been so much. There would have never been any hurt and he could have continued on with his quickies, his side chicks, and none of this would have ever happened. In this moment, he wanted her to hurt the way that he had hurt._

_Dressed, she turned to him and said coldly, “If I walk out this door, you are never going to see me again.”_

_He snorted. “Yet another ultimatum? You keep trying that and yet fail every time. What makes you think that this one will stick any better?” He rolled his eyes. “You’re nothing to me. It won’t take me long to find someone to replace the likes of you.”_

_Tears in her eyes, she stared at him as though she had never seen him before. “Is that all I ever was to you? Just something to fill your time?”_

_“Well, Jackie, what else was I going to do? A hot girl was throwing herself at me.” He laughed at the hurt expression on her face and again, he was telling himself to stop this nonsense and to apologize now and forever. “When have I ever said no to someone willing?” He sneered at her._

_She slapped him again and then grabbed the first thing she could find, throwing it at his head. He laughed at her poor aim as she grabbed a ceramic incense holder, throwing it at him. This time it crashed into the cinder block wall and broke into a thousand pieces. “I’ve loved you so much, Steven, but that’s never going to be enough for you, is it?” She shrieked. “People can’t possibly love Steven Hyde. Well you know what?_

_“I don’t anymore. I loved an ideal, not the real you.”_

_“Get out,” he snapped._

_“I hate you,” she hissed at him with all of the venom she could muster._

_She was gone the next day._

 

 

Hyde grimaced at the memory, hating himself just a little bit more. He had done everything he could to keep her at arm’s length in the hopes that it would keep him from hurting. It had only ended up hurting him worse, he had realized. He had done his best, without really trying, to drink himself to death because he had failed her in every way and he hadn’t been able to live with the knowledge.

“Look,” Donna said. “I don’t know what she’s been up to or why she’s changed so much, I just want my best friend back.” She knew she sounded whiney, but she didn’t care. “I miss Jackie,” Donna said and looked up at Hyde’s glasses. “If getting her back means that you apologize until you have an aneurysm, then do it. I don’t care what it takes.”

Hyde sighed. “Don’t you think I would if I could, Donna? I tried to get her to agree to go to coffee with me so that I could do just that, but she refused me.” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “What should I do? Kidnap her until she forgives me?”

“Well, she’s not leaving until at least after my mother has stuffed food down her throat,” Eric said firmly. “You’ve got a few hours to try and make things right so that my girlfriend gets her best friend back.”

Hyde pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed at his eyes. “Yeah, okay. I’ll try.” He slipped his sunglasses into the neck of his T-shirt and then purposefully walked inside. Jackie was sitting at the kitchen table, looking like she would have rather been in the tenth circle of Hell than listen to Kitty Forman’s dinner plans. Red was almost smiling indulgently at his wife, a beer in hand, as she flittered around the kitchen to prepare.

“And we should see if we can have Michael and Fez come down. I know it is such short notice,” Kitty blathered on, “but how often are all of my kids back in Point Place together? I bet you they’ll be on their way the second someone tells them that Jackie’s here.”

“That’s all right, Mrs. Forman,” Jackie murmured. “I don’t want to put anyone out. Besides, I can just go back to the airport and—”

“You will stay put,” Red said in a tone that brooked no argument. Jackie glanced at him furtively from her perch and then nodded slowly in acquiescence. Hyde realized then that they should have talked Red into ordering her to stay; she would have listened from the get-go instead of all of this in-fighting about whether she could or not.

Kitty was off like a shot, demanding that Eric call Michael and Fez. She asked Red to go out and get a bottle of white wine since all they had was red and she was serving chicken for dinner. Red rolled his eyes but dutifully did as his wife requested. Donna and Hyde sat down at the table on either side of Jackie, almost like sentries to keep her in place.

She _felt_ like bolting.

She had a schedule to keep; she had places to be!

She felt like her insides were melting a little. This wasn’t what was supposed to be happening! She was supposed to take a few hours out of her plans to come here and bid farewell to everyone and everything. This has been the first leg on the journey to the rest of her life and now everything was ruined. She castigated herself for being such a fool.

She had known that what she was doing was too much. She had known that she had no business taking a plane anywhere, never mind without Nick knowing about it. But the idea to make a quick pit stop in Point Place, a final farewell to the life she had left behind and the father who had died without her around had been too tempting once the thought developed in her mind.

She had been lured in by the idea that she needed to do this and couldn’t stop thinking about it. Every passing moment had been filled with the “what if” scenarios. Now that she was finally in the here and now, the “what if” had changed enough to leave her feeling like she was spinning out of control.

“So, Jackie,” Donna cut in. “What’s it like in California?”

Jackie started, too wrapped in her own thoughts to answer immediately. After a moment, she pondered the question and carefully phrased her answer to keep her life as private as possible. She talked about what it was like in LA and how she enjoyed walking up and down the famous Rodeo Drive. She kept her lips closed when she almost mentioned the little apartment she had rented for herself on waitress pay and tips, hoping to become an actress. Instead she asked Donna about how college was treating her.

Hyde watched as Jackie spoke in a near monotone regarding what should have been an exciting adventure. But it seemed more like Jackie was responding on auto pilot, being polite but not really willing to interact. Had the girls left things so badly? Or had his parting shots to her been enough to irrevocably damage her? What the hell had happened in the last three years to turn the bubbly, fiery Jackie into this being before him?

As the girls talked haltingly, he couldn’t keep his eyes off of her. He tried to listen to the conversation between the two of them, but found his mind wandering back to Jackie’s aloofness. As Mrs. Forman got dinner going, all he could do was wonder what he had done to create this robot in front of him.


	6. put a spell on you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyde wants only to be forgiven; Jackie only wants to escape.

Jackie pushed the food around on her plate. She wasn’t hungry. Everyone else was eating and laughing. Even though Michael and Fez couldn’t make it down on such short notice, the Formans, Donna, Hyde, and Eric were all doing their best to make it feel like things had been when she had been a part of the group, a semi-part of the family. It felt more like a play than anything else, only she hadn’t been assigned a part and she had come in blind.

As she sat back and watched the banter between everyone, she could see how things had changed and how they had stayed the same.

Eric was still into _Star Wars_ and was looking forward to the third installment, but he was less likely to take the guff from everyone regarding his obsession. Donna still seemed willing to overlook how much of a dork her boyfriend was and was stuck in flannel, but she was wearing quality jewelry now. Red and Kitty were still just as strong and stable, loving and kind as they had always been. Hyde seemed to have changed the most; his paranoia against the man was there but he seemed less Zen, more real.

He kept staring at her, his eyes bared open to her. She couldn’t look into his pale blue eyes for long.

As though he knew that she was thinking about him, Hyde leaned over to her – of course, Kitty had seated them together – and muttered, “You’re not eating. Mrs. Forman will be offended if you don’t at least pretend to eat something.”

“I’m not hungry,” she muttered back, which was the truth. Every time she thought about placing a piece of food into her mouth, her stomach tensed as though prepping for the act of throwing up. Whatever she placed in her mouth tasted like ashes.

He leaned his elbow against the table hiding her plate from view. She pushed the peas around with the mashed potatoes and slipped another piece of the meat into the napkin. It looked like she had at least eaten _something_ … maybe.

She looked up to make sure that Red wasn’t looking at her and slipped more pieces of chicken into her napkin. She felt bad for wasting the food, but knew that she couldn’t actually put anything inside her mouth and keep it down.

“Jackie,” Kitty giggled. Mrs. Forman had drunk two glasses of wine already with her dinner. “Did you ever become an actress? You said that’s what you were hoping to do.”

Jackie felt the blood drain from her face and wanted to faint. She had hoped to keep everything private, to keep her life for the last few years to herself. It was none of their business and for a moment, the old Jackie surfaced and wanted to say something cruel and biting. But this was Mrs. Forman and she couldn’t do that to her.

Instead she offered Kitty a polite smile. “No, of course not,” Jackie said softly. “I didn’t have what it took.” She shrugged as though it didn’t matter and in a way, it truly didn’t matter. The dream had been foolish. She had gone to a few auditions but when her agent had demanded she sleep with him to get a stupid commercial, she had realized that being an actress wasn’t for her if that’s what it took.

“I’m sorry to hear that, dear,” Kitty bubbled. “I bet you would have been a great actress!” She giggled. “You could have been on _Guiding Light_!”

Jackie offered her a small smile. “Oh, no, Mrs. Forman. I don’t think I would ever have been that good.” And Mrs. Forman was off and rambling about the latest plot lines. Jackie had forgotten that the two of them would watch the show together, back before she had a steady job and before her world had fallen apart. She nodded encouragingly at Mrs. Forman, leaning her elbow against the table so she could rest her chin against her palm.

Hyde stared at Jackie, unable to take his eyes off of her as she indulgently watched Mrs. Forman. While he watched, she reached up and brushed at the sleeve of his T-shirt, rubbing at her bicep absentmindedly. He tried to picture what had made Jackie change her mind about becoming an actress. She had always assumed she would become famous pretty quickly once someone caught her in action.

He tried to remain unobtrusive as he looked, trying to figure out what had happened to his Jackie to cause her to behave so coolly towards them all. They had all been family once, even when things were at their worst between them, they had all belonged. But it felt more like Jackie was an interloper now, unable to move into the swing of things and retune herself to the rhythms of the household.

As he stared at her until his eyes began to water, an uncontrollable rage overwhelmed him. He wanted to kill whomever had done this to his Jackie, even if that someone was himself. How _dare_ someone change _his_ Jackie into this robot like being sitting beside him? There was nothing he could do to castigate himself enough; if this new Jackie was really his fault, he should have climbed into the bottle and died there.

But he was being stupid and he knew it. He reminded himself to be Zen. He reminded himself that he had absolutely no reason to assume that this was his fault even if it felt that way.

He needed to talk to her; he needed to explain what had happened and why he had done what he had done. He needed to speak with her, no matter what, and at least get her to hear him. Maybe then he could figure out why she had changed and maybe then, if she just heard how sorry he was, this remote being beside him would warm up and become the real Jackie Burkhart again.

He had to loosen her up, he decided.

And that’s when he had a very good idea.

 

 

Jackie leaned back against the small couch in the basement, realizing that for the first time in hours, the anxiety in her stomach had abated. As the realization hit, she decided that this was actually what Heaven must be like: the steady decrease of time causing the overactive anxiety that ate away at her stomach lining to slow and stop. The headache at her temples had morphed into a case of the giggles. No one else seemed to know what was so funny, but they laughed along anyway.

She knew that she had to leave. In the back of her mind, she tried to puzzle it out, but she couldn’t come up with an excuse that made sense and especially not now when her mind was so fuzzy. When Eric had mentioned how the three of them would like to catch up with her in the basement, a clever excuse as to why she had to leave had failed to materialize. She had found herself frozen, unable to do anything aside from agreeing to visit with the three of them.

When they had sat down in the circle, she had known was coming. Hyde had lit the stick of incense while Donna pulled out the film case to get everything ready. Her mouth had gone dry when she opened it to explain that she had no intention of partaking, that she had to leave shortly, but a reason as to why she had to leave so soon still failed to emerge. An overwhelming fear had gripped her heart, the fear of watching her two very separate lives finally colliding in a nuclear mushroom cloud.

As she watched them pass around the lit join, she had suddenly felt like she didn’t know what control was anymore. Even as she considered standing up and walking away, her legs had felt like concrete barriers and she found herself staring at the joint instead of responding to the silent offer. With a Herculean effort, Jackie shook her head forcefully. She hadn’t wanted to join; getting high would only make it that much harder to remember why she had to leave.

But somewhere along the way, the pipsqueak that Eric had been had died in the intervening years. He wasn’t willing to listen to her enfeebled excuse of having to leave and needing to keep a clear head.

“You can’t sit in circle and not take a hit,” Eric had said firmly, pushing the lit joint back in her direction. Jackie had again shook her head, not wanting to do this. The need to get the hell out of Dodge was almost overwhelming; she thought she would scream. She couldn’t figure out why it was so hard to escape. Why couldn’t she just tell them all to leave her alone for eternity? “I mean it, Jackie.”

“It wasn’t exactly my idea to be here, Eric,” Jackie retorted with a flair of her old Jackie dramatis. Donna and Hyde had exchanged a glance and something inside of Jackie had broken a little inside. She had realized that the only reason she didn’t want to partake wasn’t because she needed to leave, but because the anxiety and fear of the last few hours had fueled her. Without them, she didn’t know if she could keep going.

Jackie had realized that giving in to the mental chatter of her head and the phantom pains of her insides wasn’t working for her anymore. With an intensity that she hadn’t been expecting, she had pulled off her black glasses and took a hit. Almost immediately, she had felt the urge to cough as she blindly pushed the joint in her ex-boyfriend’s direction.

She could feel her mind expanding just a little as the drug took hold. Now that she knew that pot meant her mind shut up for five fucking minutes, she couldn’t believe she had been acting like such an old stick in the mud. Why hadn’t she suggested this sooner? Maybe being high would have made going to the cemetery that much easier. She giggled again, a hoarse sound that came out stiff. It was like her throat didn’t know what giggling was anymore.

 “So, Jackie,” Donna said. “What have you been up to in California?”

In a remote sort of way, Jackie felt a hint of alarm. She didn’t want to answer these questions, she remembered, but something inside of her head asked why. She couldn’t remember. “A little of this. A little of that.”

“Did you have an apartment?” Donna asked, feeling like she was asking twenty questions. Donna was trying to remember why she wanted to know about Jackie. She kept staring at the smaller girl’s dark sunglasses, left discarded on the table between them. She could see her reflection in the tinted glass and it looked like her head was huge.

“Oh, yes,” Jackie said. She reached out a blind hand and found her sunglasses. Clutching them in her hand, she put them back on, rubbing her tired eyes beneath the cool lenses. When she opened her eyes again, she felt like she was protected and safe. It was stupid, but the sunglasses kept her thoughts hidden.

“What was your place like?”

“It was small,” Jackie murmured. She reached up and rubbed at her left eye, yawning as she did so. Jackie was beginning to feel like she needed to take a cat nap. The back of her mind howled at the thought: she needed to leave. But with how heavy her limbs felt, she didn’t think she could even walk upstairs to go to bed, never mind the idea of both renting a car and then driving.

Hyde watched Jackie quietly, wanting to reach over and rip the damn sunglasses off. He couldn’t figure out a nice way to say something, though. His first and only instinct was to toss them in the garbage. Since when did Jackie hide from them? That was _his_ job.

Maybe he sensed the stream of Hyde’s thoughts or maybe he just felt the same, but Eric leaned over to Jackie and demanded: “Why are you wearing the darkest pair of sunglasses I’ve ever seen inside?” Hyde deeply approved of this question.

Jackie giggled again. “Hyde wears sunglasses inside. Why don’t you ask him why he wears his?” She giggled again and this was a giggle that Hyde knew.

The first few giggles sounded like they were rusty and old. They felt like they were being forced between a pair of lips that didn’t know what laughing was like. But this one was a true giggle. It was a Jackie giggle. It was the sound she made when she was happy, when she was free. It was a sound that could turn him on in a matter of seconds. Even as he thought about that giggle and the feelings it invoked, his jeans grew just a little tighter. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

Jackie yawned again. “How was Africa, Eric? I never got a chance to ask.” She had been gone before he returned, before the group of friends rang in 1980 together.

Eric told her a story about being chased by a rampaging rhinoceros which left Jackie in hysterics. She was pretty sure he was making it up, but it sounded good at least. While he told his story of woe, she glanced at Donna and Hyde who seemed to be having a whole conversation in just silent looks. She knew what the focus was, just as she knew that they had lured her down here in the hopes she would open up to them, that she would talk.

Maybe a year ago she would have been able to do that. Maybe even six months ago she would have been okay with it. But she had changed and the bonds that had made them her friends had been severed. She couldn’t let her guard down. But she was suddenly tired, a forgotten byproduct of getting high. It was hardly late, but she just wanted to go to sleep. She hoped that Mrs. Forman would let her sleep in Laurie’s room for the night.

Like a zing across her mind, she remembered that she had things to do. If Nick found out where she was, she reminded herself. But it was lost in the hazy pattern of her thoughts until she was giggling to herself. The others told jokes and Hyde told them a story about a car that could drive on water that the government owned, which sounded so familiar to her even as she laughed with them.

It felt like an eternity passed before Jackie was finally level headed again. Everyone had shifted a little; Eric got up and brought over Popsicles for them all to snack on.

She took the proffered red Popsicle and sucked on it greedily. This was the first thing she had eaten in almost twenty-four hours and she could feel her stomach cramping angrily, wanting more than just a Popsicle now that she had relaxed. But the idea of eating was unappealing. She just wanted to ingest the juice of the frozen treat and then go to sleep.

Or maybe walk on the moon.

Maybe she was still just a little high.

She was comfortable on this old ratty couch that had seen countless make out sessions with both Michael and Steven. She giggled at that thought, which slowed down as her thoughts maneuvered back to how hungry she was. She felt like she was on the verge of an abyss and if she wasn’t careful, she would fall down and die from a broken leg or maybe starvation.

Donna left after a while with Eric in tow, seeming no longer interested in getting her to talk about her life in California.

Jackie kept her eyes closed behind her glasses, wondering what it would be like to float in space. Hyde pretended to watch television, but really he was watching her. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Now that he had her alone, he could ask her about anything that came to mind, but he wasn’t sure even what to say.

He kept going back to the question of whether or not he even had a _right_ to say anything to her. They hadn’t been friends in years and maybe, he was just looking for something to make himself feel better, to make himself look like the standup kind of guy he wanted to show her he had become.

“Jackie, look,” He began and then stopped. He leaned forward on his favorite chair and Jackie moved her head slightly in his direction. He cleared his throat and wished he was still wearing his stupid sunglasses, but he knew that she had always disliked how they hid whatever it was he was feeling from her. He opened his mouth, ready to confess a million different things that had occurred to him in recent months. “I—”

“No,” she said firmly. She sat up slowly and pulled the dark glasses from her face. Steven stared into her beautiful eyes and thought he would drown in them. Her makeup was picture perfect, as always, and only accentuated just how truly beautiful she was. She should have been an actress, he thought.

“No what?” He demanded, confused.

She shook her head. “I don’t want to do this, Steven. I came here to say good-bye to my dead father. I didn’t come here to make amends or to patch things up. There’s nothing left to patch.” She shrugged. Her gaze was firm and serious. He could feel it like twin knives deep into his stomach and his heart. He could feel everything inside dying just a little bit at a time at the cold hardness of that look.

That look was something that _he_ had created with his reckless stupidity. All because he couldn’t listen to the wiser voice in his head. That look was something that he had molded, not with his two hands, but with his own mouth. This was his punishment, he realized, seeing that look for an eternity. He could never atone for what he did, not really. He knew that now. That look was just the nail the coffin needed.

He swallowed convulsively and looked away, unable to stand it anymore. Before he could stop himself, he was speaking quietly, “You have every right to hate me. I don’t deserve anything less and I know that. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry, Jackie. I never meant to hurt you; I only wanted to drive you away from me before you hurt me again. I did just what I wanted and in the process… I hurt myself worse than anything you could have ever said or done to me.”

He looked back at her. The hard glint of her eyes hadn’t melted, but he knew he had to keep going. Hadn’t he wanted absolution? How was he to get it if he didn’t speak his piece? He offered her a faint lopsided grin. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for what I said and what I did. It’s unforgiveable – I know that. But I just wanted you to know that I would do anything to take it all back if I could.”

Jackie stared at him. She didn’t know what to feel or to think. She honestly didn’t know what to say. She had hoped that by coming here to say farewell to her father, she could just walk right back out. She was hoping Hyde would never know she was in town and that was that. But here she was, sitting in the basement with the one person who had made her feel whole and beautiful even when she was at her darkest, ugliest place listening to him tell her he was sorry for ripping her heart out again and again and again.

Why had she decided to come back here? She wondered. Why had she felt the need to say good-bye to her father? It wasn’t like they had the greatest relationship and she had truly said her farewells years ago. So why had she decided that she needed to come to Point Place at all? Why had she needed to come here, to bid good-bye to a man who had never really known her?

She had obviously made a mistake.

As she sat there, wondering what it was she was supposed to say to Hyde’s confession, she bit the inside of her lip convulsively. She chewed the interior before moving to the outside. It seemed to be almost subconscious as her small, perfect teeth shred her lip. Hyde watched in confusion as blood peppered the lines of her lips. “Jackie,” he said concerned. “Are you okay?”

She slid the damaged lip into her mouth for a moment before nodding. “Yeah,” she said finally. “I’m fine.” That remote persona, the pod person living in Jackie’s body, had come back. She offered him a false smile and put the dark glasses back into place. “I’m doing just fine,” she assured him. “You know what? I don’t feel very well. I’m going to see if I can stay in Laurie’s room tonight since I don’t think I’m good to leave yet and then tomorrow, I will be going home.”

“Jackie, I really think we should talk,” Hyde began standing up as she did.

“Oh, no, Hyde,” she said gently, “we’ve said all that needs to be said.” He reached out and tried to touch her arm but she flinched away from him, practically jumping over the couch in her need to get away from him. Hyde gaped after her, unable to fully comprehend what had just happened. She stared at him, almost panting in her need to get away from him. “Good night,” she said in that remote voice of hers and walked up the basement steps.

Hyde sat down heavily in his favorite chair, watching her as she went. Jackie had always been something of a puzzle to him, though the most puzzling pieces were the fact that she inexplicably seemed to love him and support him and forgive him. But this new and improved robotic Jackie was far more of a puzzle. She was truly an enigma. He knew he had hurt her beyond all measure, but she seemed to be taking the cold thing a little too far.

Besides it usually only took a matter of minutes for them to be in the same room before he could ignite her fury. That’s all it normally took, but she kept outdoing him with this whole Zen routine if what she was doing really was Zen. He couldn’t keep up. He felt like he was treading water in the middle of the ocean, hoping that the good ship _U.S.S. Jackie_ would throw him a life preserver. Instead, she kept throwing random items at him. He didn’t know how to piece them together to save himself.

He felt like he was drowning, but it was really his own fault. He had, after all, taken the leap into the ocean in the first place.


	7. call it pretending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Midnight confessions.

Hyde was flipping through the TV Guide when Eric let himself into the basement. Eric froze at the back door and stared at his best friend in slowly mounting horror. Hyde glanced up from his inspection of what was on television, waiting for Eric to explain the look on his face. “Hyde,” Eric yelled, “what the hell are you doing down here?”

“I live down here, Forman,” Hyde explained to him. He spoke to Eric like he was talking to a three-year-old. “I moved back in a few months ago and took up residence back in my old room.”

“No, you moron,” Eric snapped, stomping across the basement and plopping down on the small couch. He stared at his best friend like Hyde’s IQ had suddenly plummeted. “Jackie is upstairs right now in Laurie’s room and has nowhere to go until tomorrow.”

“So?”

“Are you not the same guy who was telling me just last week that you felt like you couldn’t move on with your life until she forgave you? Because I’m pretty sure we had that conversation right here, in this very room.”

Hyde shifted uncomfortably in his chair, letting the magazine fall shut. He fiddled with the cover for a moment before saying, “I tried to have that conversation and she told me not to bother because there’s nothing to patch.”

He tried to keep how bleak he was feeling out of his voice – everything Zen after all – but he knew it had leaked through. Eric was his best friend for a reason. Eric knew him the best out of everyone except maybe the Jackie who had loved him unconditionally.

With a heavy sigh, Eric got to his feet and stooped into Hyde’s face. “Again I have to ask you what the hell you’re doing down here? Jackie isn’t going anywhere until tomorrow morning. You have all night to talk to her.” Eric peered into his friend’s face, hoping he would get up and just go.

Eric was pretty sure that Hyde’s grip on sobriety was tenuous. He was worried that if Jackie rejected his attempts to reconcile then it would push him over the edge. Eric couldn’t really fault Jackie for refusing to believe that Hyde had changed and that he truly wanted forgiveness for the sins he had committed against her. But Eric wasn’t going to let his best friend give it a single shot and let it lead to failure.

If there was anything Eric could do to keep his best friend from killing himself in a bottle of Jack, then he was going to push him to do it. It was selfish in a way because at the end of the day, Eric wasn’t just trying to help his best friend but also to prevent himself from the unending horror at the prospect of losing his best friend. He didn’t want to imagine what it would be like to come home one day to find him dead after suffocating on his own vomit. He had had to imagine that possibility all through the years of Hyde’s alcoholism and he didn’t want to head back down that road.

“She doesn’t want to hear it, Eric,” Hyde snarled. He stared up at his best friend, wanting to hit him for not listening to what he was saying. He hadn’t realized how much it had hurt to have her turn her back on him, to ignore what he had said.

Eric grabbed Hyde by the shoulders and shoved his face in close until he was only an inch away. “If you do not get upstairs and grovel, sob, whimper, yell, or whatever you have to do in order to feel like you’ve been absolved, then I will kick your ass from here to Africa.”

Hyde stared at his best friend as though he had never seen him before in his life. Who was this string bean threatening him? It was a joke, of course. Eric couldn’t even take on his girlfriend; she could easily pin him. What sort of crap was this?

But Hyde knew. He understood. Eric was worried about him. Everyone had been worried about Hyde for so long that it was almost like background noise now. Eric’s worry wasn’t the only one that mattered. It was just the one that made him pay attention the most. That’s what best friends were for.

Hadn’t he spent all night pulling the fire alarm so that Donna and Casey didn’t get the chance to sleep together? Eric would have done the same thing for _him_ if Hyde had needed him to. This was Eric’s version of pulling the fire alarm all night long.

“All right, man, all right,” Hyde agreed. Eric let him go and Hyde stood up slowly. Eric was right. He had a finite amount of time to get one last try in there before the cards came down one way or another. Hanging around in front of the television all night feeling sorry for himself wasn’t going to get anything done. He had to at least put in the attempt to save himself.

With that thought pounding in his head, he started the climb upstairs.

It was almost like a dream as he wandered through the darkened house and up the stairs to the second floor. He knew where all the creaks and groans were in the stairs and in the hallway. He skirted them all easily, having memorized the particular noises the Forman household made after moving in with them in high school. Before he knew it, he was standing outside of Laurie’s bedroom door, just staring at it.

The door was painted white and it had held all of Laurie’s hopes and dreams for years before she had gone off and whored herself out in college. Mrs. Forman kept it just like the day Laurie had left up to Canada. No one had heard from her in years. It was almost like a joke – they had adopted the orphan and lost a kid in the process.

He pressed his sweaty palms against the door, arguing with himself about the wisdom here. She had no reason to answer his knock. She could pretend to be sleep. She could already be asleep, but here he was, following his best friend’s advice. He pulled his hands from the door and rubbed them against his jeans, trying to get the nervous sweat off but it just kept coming.

This was such a bad idea, he decided.

He turned to walk away, turned to leave it alone. He would make up some excuse to Eric the next day. He would tell him that he had knocked, but Jackie had already been asleep. He would make up some plausible scenario about why he hadn’t gotten anywhere with what Eric demanded and they would shake hands and sit in the circle and life would move on. Maybe.

As he moved to go back downstairs, he heard a muffled sound from Laurie’s room. Without thinking about it, he turned back and pressed his ear to the door. It was flimsy at best. It had always been easy to tell when Laurie was “entertaining.” The noise came again and he was pretty sure that Jackie was crying. The part of himself that always wanted to be her knight in shining armor, no matter how uncomfortable the title made him feel, was opening the door before he could second guess himself.

The room was pitch black and as the door opened slowly, the sob that she had been in the middle of stopped. “Who’s there?” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

Jackie’s heart was in her throat. She had been trying to keep quiet, trying not to cry into the night. She knew that it would only lead to embarrassing questions if Eric or Mrs. Forman heard her. She could pawn it all off on the fact that she hadn’t realized how much she missed her dad. It would have been a lie, but it would have been enough to get them to leave her alone.

“Jackie?” A voice said in the pitch blackness. She knew the voice and she moved slightly on the bed. She didn’t reach for the light; she didn’t need to. She relaxed just a little against the full sized mattress, relieved beyond all measure that it was Hyde in the doorway instead of any of the Formans. She thought it perverse: she could cry in front of the one who had made her cry an ocean of tears but crying in front of the perfect Formans only made her feel dirty.

The tears were still wet on her cheeks as the bedroom door was shut quietly in the dark. She could hear his careful footsteps across the thin carpet covering the bedroom floor. Tears slid down her cheeks in the darkness and maybe it wasn’t really that she was crying in front of Hyde that was okay, but the fact that she was covered in the same darkness that had taken root in her soul. He wouldn’t really be able to see how much she was hurting.

Hyde’s boot connected with the footboard of Laurie’s old bed. He reached out and found the mattress. He slid a hand slowly up and connected with Jackie’s foot. Like the touch was some sort of button, her tears were back in force and she tried to choke back the sobs. Hyde moved around the bed and then knelt down beside it.

He reached out with a hand uncertainly, unable to see a damn thing in front of him. How the hell could it be so damn dark in here? He wondered. His hand connected with soft, feminine flesh and he traced the appendage beneath his hand until he found her fingers. Convulsively, her hand slid around his offered one and she clutched it to her like a lifeline. She curled around the arm and cried for every sorrow she could think of before she was spent.

Hyde let her cry, reaching out tentatively with his free hand to run his fingers comfortingly through her hair. He wasn’t sure if he was doing the comfort thing right. He never knew what to say, but once upon a time, Jackie had come to him with all of her tears. She wasn’t curled into his lap like the days of old, but he hoped the contact with his hands was enough.

“Edna died a couple months ago,” he surprised himself by saying when her tears had slowed.

“What?” Jackie asked. Her voice was watery and thick. She cleared her throat past the lump that had grown there.

“She was in Phoenix, I guess, and her body gave out. Years’ worth of partying and drinking had finally caught up with her. I didn’t even know she had died,” he confessed. He sighed and then let out a bitter laugh. “It was happenstance that I found out. Some bill collector was trying to get someone to pay off a debt – I don’t remember what and they contacted me. I couldn’t even figure out what the hell was going on until they told me she was dead.”

“Did you go to see her grave?” Jackie asked in a small voice.

Hyde snorted. “Not for a while. I was…” He trailed off, not quite sure how to explain what his life had been like after she had gone.

Sliding into the bottle had been easy; falling into the self-hatred had been like putting on a pair of comfortable old pants; realizing that he was a complete and utter jackass had only been icing on the cake. He didn’t think he had the right to tell her any of that, though. This wasn’t about him or what his life had been like.

Finally, he said, “I didn’t want to go. I didn’t care. She had never done anything good for me except to run off.” He had always thought that she had really done the right thing when she left. If she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to experience what a real family was like. He shrugged into the dark, closing his eyes. “Edna died and I didn’t feel anything about it at all.”

With a sniffle, Jackie muttered, “So you never said good-bye?”

“I went to see her grave last month actually,” Hyde explained slowly. He thought back to the drive down to Phoenix and how he had nearly turned around a dozen times. He didn’t know why he was going. “I didn’t know why I was going down there. I almost turned around and came home, but I ended up going.

“She was buried off by herself in a small field. Someone had scraped together enough money for one of those little stones that they dig into the ground. It just had her name and the dates.” Hyde laughed a little bitterly. “I brought flowers and couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t like she had ever given me anything. But I put them there on the grave and… I don’t know. I felt a little better about it all, I guess.”

“That was how you said good-bye,” Jackie affirmed.

“Maybe?” Hyde said uncertainly. “I don’t really know. It’s not like it matters. She was the person who gave birth to me and kept me around until the Formans took over the job she never wanted. But it was like… a compulsion. I needed to at least see for sure that she was dead. And going to the grave was like closing the cover on a book that I had left open for years.”

“Yes,” Jackie agreed, latching onto the words. “Yes, that’s it exactly.” And it explained, in a way, why she had come back here. It wasn’t simply saying farewell to her father for all time, but a farewell in the flesh to the life she had lived here. It made sense that she would need to finish the novel of her time in Point Place. Bidding farewell to her father at his grave had only been a part of that.

It made sense now why she couldn’t leave when she had wanted to. She had unfinished business.

They were both silent for a long time. Hyde continued to stroke her hair almost absentmindedly and she felt tired even as her mind churned at the idea that she had unfinished business. “I know you don’t want to hear it,” Hyde found himself saying. He was surprised. It was like his mouth had taken control. He hadn’t wanted to beg her forgiveness when she was clearly grieving for the loss of a father who had never been around. Out of everyone, he knew just how confusing that process could be.

“Steven, please stop,” she said. Her voice sounded old and wrinkled. It sounded like she had been used up by everyone and everything. She sounded like she was 41, not 21. She let out a very long, drawn out breath. “There’s nothing left to forgive, Steven.”

“What?” He asked.

She let out a sort of dry chuckle. It sounded like dead autumn leaves rolling across the pavement. “I had forgiven you a long time ago, Steven,” she whispered. “It took me longer than I expected, but I _did_ forgive you. I understood why you said those things to me. You only clinched the reason earlier when you said that you had done it to push me away from you. I understood years ago that was the reason. I forgave you for what you said, what you did, and how I sacrificed myself to be with you.

“There’s nothing left to forgive, Steven.”

He seemed to be unable to speak. It was like she had knocked the breath from his body. He couldn’t believe that she had given him his absolution years ago. How was it possible that she could forgive him for being such a raging jackass? How could she still, to this day, completely confound him?

“Jackie…”

“Steven,” she interrupted, “I need to sleep.”

“Right, of course,” he agreed. He started to stand up, but she continued to clutch his hand to her bosom. He peered at her and could just barely make out the amorphous shape that was Jackie. He tugged a little at his hand, but she seemed to clench it more tightly in her hand. “Jackie?”

“I don’t want to sleep alone,” she confessed, her voice barely audible at the admission. The confession felt like a weight off her chest. Hyde just stood there, unable to comprehend what it was she was saying. Very slowly, she rolled onto her opposite side and scooched over to make room for him. “I’m sorry to ask this and it’s okay for you to say no, but… Can you please just hold me, Steven?”

Swallowing nervously, he said, “All right.” He toed his boots off and then climbed onto the bed behind her. He moved up close until they were spooning. He maneuvered himself a little until he was comfortable. She held his hand in hers and he moved in close, knocking the breath from her and she groaned a little as he bounced around, accidentally elbowing her in the back. He muttered his apologies as he got comfortable on the full sized bed.

As he lay down behind her, he tried to figure out what was happening. It felt like he was stuck in a time warp. It reminded him of those nights when Jackie would sneak into the basement when no one was at home in the huge mansion on the hill. He felt like he was straddling the past and the future in this moment.

He felt a little dazed, but so too did Jackie.

She didn’t know why she had asked him to sleep beside her. Maybe it was the distinctive scent that was Steven, winding its way into brain and boring a hole there. Or maybe it was because she had always just felt safe with him and it was safety, above all else, that she craved at the moment.

It didn’t matter, she just needed him to hold her.


	8. the working man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyde's search for absolution may have finally found its mark.

Jackie seemed to swim to wakefulness in stages. She would come to herself with a sort of inner jolt and then slowly sink back down into sleep. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept so well. It was like a sort of drug: once she had a taste, she couldn’t get enough. She wanted more. But as more and more of the world outside began to wake, she found it harder and harder to allow herself the privilege of slipping back beneath the waves.

When she finally came fully awake, she noticed that she had rolled over in her sleep in the night. Steven’s arms were wrapped around her in a sort of protective bubble that added to the drugged feeling. Her nose was pressed into his neck and with each inhalation, she caught a whiff of the distinctive male scent that was all Steven.

She remembered when they had been teens, she had found that his scent could make her giddy. She hadn’t felt that way with Michael. His smell had sometimes turned her stomach or at other times, she found herself indifferent to it. But when she had been with Steven, just a hint of his smell on her clothes could send her down into a spiral of emotional waves that left her speechless and breathless at the same time.

As she lay in the shelter of his arms, she realized that she felt _safe_. It was a precious commodity now; something that she would treasure. She had always felt safe with him, though. Even when they had been at their worst with Steven’s caustic and bruising remarks as sharp as a knife, she had known that when he held her that he would keep her safe. After years of not knowing what safety was, she welcomed the resurgence.

But the day was beginning to make itself felt and she knew she couldn’t lie there forever. As much as she wanted to ignore reality and ignore what she had to do, she knew that she couldn’t do that. She had spent enough time living in a fantasy world, making up stories about why her father had gone “away” and why her mother was always missing. She knew she had to face reality whether she was prepared for it or not.

Slowly she began the process of disengaging herself from Steven, which was easier said than done.

One hand rested possessively against her hip and the other against her ribs. She had to move slowly to keep him from waking up and she found that she was trying to slither out from between his arms, which made her back ache. She paused halfway to freedom, breathing steadily through her nose with her head pressed against his ribcage. She could hear the steady thump of his heart and the smooth inhalations of breath that signaled he was still asleep. She lay like that for a time, just counting the heartbeats as she rested.

It seemed like an eternity passed before she was finally free. She slid immediately into the bathrobe that someone had kindly left on the footboard of the bed. It was plain blue and covered the oversized T-shirt she had with ease. The sleeves were a little too big and it slid off her shoulders if she didn’t keep her posture stiff. She glanced at the clock as she left the room and was surprised to see that she had slept until almost 9:30 in the morning.

It was decadent, really. She hadn’t slept past 6AM in months. But as she slid into the bathroom to wash her face and get the wild strands of her hair under control, she realized that she hadn’t really slept in as much as she had thought. It was too early in the morning for her to remember time zone differentials. It was only 7:30 in California.

Thoughts of her home out west made her stomach flop before tying itself in knots.

Nick was in New York and was probably already awake, going to whatever business meetings he had to see to before he left. He was then supposed to take a trip out to Miami with a 11AM departure. She wondered if he had tried to call home yet and she hadn’t answered. He checked in on her sparingly when he was on his business trips, assuming that the rules he had set for her and his staff were being abided by.

She tried to imagine what would happen to him if he found out she wasn’t at home. She could imagine the look on his face, the way his fists would open and close spasmodically as he grew steadily angrier at her. She shuddered, having no doubt that if her husband was aware of her trip to Point Place then Nick’s anger would know no bounds.

She looked at her face in the mirror, admiring the purple bruises under her eyes. They were the usual signs of not enough sleep, not enough food, and too much stress. She had never had them before moving to California and found the look of them unsettling. As she pulled back from her intense scrutiny, she saw the thinned out appearance of her face. She was able to hide how thin she looked with makeup, but in the early morning, she had to face facts: the hollows under her eyes were deeper, her lips had thinned. She resembled a skull in certain light.

It was like the Jolly Roger flag waving in her face: pirates were looming and she had to decide how to proceed. She could fight fire with fire or she could try to evade the incoming pirates.

The problem was that she found herself stuck in a sort of self-imposed limbo, unable to make any decisions that may impact her future. The second biggest decision she had made for herself in recent months had been to take a plane to come to visit her father’s grave. Any bigger planning left her unable to function, staring blankly until someone else made a decision for her.

She had to admit that, as track records went, she seemed extraordinarily bad at making good decisions for her future.

She had thought that she was making the right decision by giving Steven an ultimatum about Chicago. She hadn’t necessarily wanted him to marry her right then and there. She had only wanted to know that there was a future. She had believed that the ultimatum was the right thing to do at the time, but she had been wrong.

She had thought that she was making the right decision by moving far away from Point Place, not even bothering to bid farewell to her friends before leaving. She had assumed that she would get her dream job and become a world famous actress overnight. She had believed that those choices were the right ones to make at the time, but as she looked back now, she realized that she had been wrong then too.

It seemed that she was good at making decisions, but not necessarily making the _right_ decisions. There were too many disorganized unknowns in the world. She didn’t know what possibility was the best possibility. She just knew that she ached and needed time to think. However, she also knew she didn’t have enough time to really make the right decisions.

She stared into her eyes, probing them for an answer.

 

 

Steven woke up, feeling like he was out of place. Slowly he lifted his head to peer around the soft pink bedroom. The night before flooded back to him then as he looked around Laurie’s room. He glanced at the clock and was surprised he had slept in. Scratching his head, he rolled over and look around the room with a frown. He worried that Jackie had left again without saying good-bye. Once didn’t a pattern make, but the worry was enough to pull him from the bed.

He waltzed out the door and made a pit stop at the bathroom, pushing the partially ajar door open. He froze when he realized that Jackie was in there, studying her reflection in the mirror. As he watched the pale blue bathrobe she was wearing slid down her shoulder, taking the T-shirt she had worn to bed with it. Across her shoulder blade, he could see the yellow-and-purple haze of a fading bruise above the scoop neck of the T-shirt.

He pulled away from the door and stood outside the bathroom, trying to calm his racing heart. Could he ask her what it was he was seeing? And if he did, would it strain the tentative bonds they had managed to forge with their pitch black confessions? Would she even give him an honest answer?

Jackie had been incredibly secretive regarding her life in California. Was it possible that she was on the run from someone who had been hurting her? She wouldn’t want to talk about it, if she could help it. But he also knew that he had to handle this as delicately as possible. Jackie may have changed on some fundamental levels, but treading carefully where she was concerned was always the best policy.

He desperately wished he could talk to someone about this. He had never been successful at treading delicately when it came to Jackie.

He knocked on the door and there was a moment of hesitation before Jackie called softly, “Come in.” He pushed the door open a little further and found himself a little startled by how much she had changed. He had been so focused on the bruise that he hadn’t paused long enough to take a good look at her.

While she had been wearing her makeup and sunglasses, he hadn’t noticed it. But now that they were missing, he could tell that her face had thinned out noticeably. He could see that her eyes had sunken and her lips had thinned. She had purple bags under her eyes, another new feature. It was like he was looking at Jackie age before his eyes.

“Jackie,” he said slowly, “is everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” She asked back. There was a thread of the old Jackie in her voice, though she still seemed aloof and standoffish. But he could just hear the little girl in there. The one who would talk to her unicorns and would daydream about happily ever after. “I slept very well, thank you,” she added politely.

“Yeah, I did too,” he muttered. He ran his fingers through his hair uncomfortably. Her eyes were so careful, just like when she spoke. It was like she had taught herself to be in constant control for the last three years. He was thrown off by it. He was used to her tantrums and her rambling. But she hardly wasted a breath to say anything now.

“Do you need to get in here?” She murmured. “If you give me a few minutes, I will get out of the way.”

Hyde sighed. He didn’t feel like she was in the way. He just wanted to know what was happening so that he could take steps to fix it. He had no right, he knew, to fix anything. But maybe this was a part of the absolution process. She had forgiven him but that didn’t mean she trusted him. Maybe by protecting her, he could prove that he had truly changed.

Finally, he decided to go for broke. What he had intended to say and what came out were two separate things, though. “Look, I know that things between us are a little shaky and whatnot, but I just wanted to let you know that I’m here if you need me to be.”

She offered him a bright smile. It was like a gift sent down to him, the smile that could light up a whole room, a whole house, a whole year. It was quintessential Jackie. It wasn’t the cool, remote person who had shown up on her way to say good-bye to her father. This was the woman he had loved and desired, had protected to the best of his ability from everyone and everything except himself. “Thank you, Steven,” she said softly, her eyes meeting his.

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, to bring up the elephant in the room. But he found himself closing his mouth. He remembered how she had reacted when everyone had cornered her after her mother had left. But he remembered in a string of bad decisions every time he had ever failed her. He couldn’t figure out how to bring it up, how to explain to her that he could help.

He just kept coming back to the idea that he didn’t have the right to meddle, that he shouldn’t even try. After everything he had put her through, she shouldn’t trust him at all. He stared into her eyes, trying to read her. He was trying to determine if he could open his mouth and whisper to her the words that were in his head.

The look on her face, in her eyes, was driving him crazy. He had been able to read her like an open book once and now, he found himself wondering if maybe he was standing in front of a mannequin and not the Jackie Burkhart he had fallen in love with. Her eyes were blank at he stared into them and it worried him, the blankness. Had he been the one to cause it or was it whomever or whatever had hurt her before she had come here?

“I will be out in a few moments, Steven,” she assured him smiling.

“Take your time,” he found himself saying. She touched his cheek affectionately and then turned back to the mirror, studying her reflection. He felt his heart beating in his throat. He could almost see her searching for herself in the image staring back at her. He wanted to take her into his arms and tell that he would keep her safe from herself and everything else in the world.

Instead, he clenched his hands into fists.


	9. get down woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackie gets a phone call.

Jackie entered the Forman kitchen smelling bacon. It smelled divine. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten a home cooked and delicious breakfast. Most mornings, she ate part of a grapefruit or an orange or maybe a cantaloupe and that was all until lunch. She was startled to find her stomach aroused by the scent of bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast. She wanted to devour whatever it was Mrs. Forman was making.

“Good morning, Mrs. Forman,” Jackie said with a smile. Kitty looked up from scraping the scrambled eggs onto a plate and smiled back. Kitty was pleased to see Jackie looking so boisterous and much more her old self. It was like sleeping under her roof had been the magical cure that the girl needed.

“Morning, Jackie dear,” Kitty rejoined. “I’ve just finished making breakfast.” She gestured to the plate of scrambled eggs. “Now I made bacon and toast to go with the eggs, but I can make you some sausage if you would prefer.”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Forman,” Jackie assured her. “Bacon will be just fine.”

“I’ll go and see if Steven’s awake and he can join us for breakfast,” Kitty decided.

Jackie smiled as she slid into a chair at the table. “He’s already awake, Mrs. Forman. He was going into the bathroom as I came downstairs. He should be down here soon enough.” As though he had known that they had been talking about him, he walked through the swinging door and moved straight to the kitchen table, sitting beside Jackie.

Mrs. Forman brought the plates over, singing to herself in a cheerful way. Jackie shot Hyde a carefree grin as they watched Mrs. Forman dance through the kitchen. Jackie had to admit that she was enjoying this side of the older woman, seeing her so full of life and pizazz. It made her feel good about the world, knowing that there were women like Mrs. Forman around.

Jackie dug into the pile of bacon on her plate and thought that this must be what Heaven tasted like. Beside her, Steven watched surreptitiously as she began to devour the bacon. She wanted shove the whole pile into her mouth, chewing through it loudly like a cow. Daintily, she took a few more bites to finish off the first slice before picking up the next one.

As Kitty began cleaning up the pots and pans she had used for breakfast, the phone rang. “Oh, I’ll get it,” she assured Steven as he moved to grab the phone. Kitty waved her hand at the two of them as she danced over to the wall and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?” Kitty sang to whomever was on the other end.

Jackie took a bite of bacon and then grabbed a butter knife for her triangles of toast. “Oh, yes,” Kitty said, as Jackie began buttering the toast. “She’s right here.” Kitty held out the receiver to Jackie, who looked at her in confusion. “It’s for you, dear,” Kitty said sweetly.

Jackie frowned at the receiver and then looked over at Steven, as though he could explain who was calling her here. She hadn’t told anyone that she was here, but then again, all of her old friends knew that she was. Maybe Michael and Fez were calling to say hi. She couldn’t help but realize that she was excited at the thought that either one of them would call. She hadn’t realized it, but she had missed her friends.

Jackie got to her feet and took the handset into her hands. She pressed the phone to her ear and swallowed the last of the bacon in her mouth before saying, “Hello?” Her voice was soft, carefree. It felt more and more like the old Jackie was coming back to them. Kitty smiled affectionately at Jackie, squeezing her arm as she went back to doing the dishes. Hyde watched from her place at the kitchen table, wondering who was calling her.

“Jacqueline,” Nick’s deep, cultured voice said into her ear. “I am very disappointed in you.” Jackie didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. He would know that the moment he uttered those words her shoulders had hunched in on themselves. He would know that she had lowered her head as though she had been the house pet who had an accident on the carpet. “We discussed this and I was very clear that you were not to go to Point Place.”

“Yes,” she said softly.

Hyde stood up from the table, frowning at the sudden change that had come over Jackie. She had been the sweet and smiling young woman that held his heart in her hands and now she looked like she was the world’s biggest disappointment. He and Kitty both exchanged confused looks, unable to understand what it was that was happening before their eyes.

To Jackie, it felt like Nick was standing right in front of her. She could tell from his tone that he was Not Happy, a state of mind that never boded well for anyone who had put him in it. She could tell that he was convulsively squeezing his hands into fists, that his shoulders were tight with the intensity of his own emotions, and that his eyes would be hard, dark rocks. She knew that he was angry and she knew that she had to make him understand why she had needed to come home.

“I am very unhappy with you,” he continued. “I have had to postpone my trip to Florida so that I can come and pick you up. You know how important this trip was to me and you ruined it.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “I understand.”

“I will be in Kenosha this afternoon.”

“I can meet—”

“No,” he interrupted her smoothly. “You will not meet us anywhere. I will come to you.” She could hear papers shifting and imagined him poking around on the large expanse of the desk in his office in New York. She closed her eyes and felt the telltale tingles of fear and trepidation shooting down the back of her head, down her spine, and shuddered with it. “I have the address of these… _people_ right in front of me.” The way he said the word, “people,” it was practically a curse.

“Yes, of course,” she agreed.

“You will be ready for me at 3 o’clock. You will be presentable.”

She looked down at the clothes she was wearing, horrorstricken. She would need to go out and find something to wear, something that he deemed presentable. Her clothes hadn’t been a problem when she had planned on running away, never to see his face or hear his anger again. She had just needed to wear simple clothes and be the simple Jackie Burkhart while she was in Point Place.

“Of course,” she said again. She was running on autopilot again, trying to figure out where to get presentable clothes so that Nick wouldn’t be mortified by what he found when he showed up.

“We will discuss this when we get to Miami,” he continued. “You will apologize to my clients when we meet them for drinks tonight.”

“Of course I will, Nick,” she stated. “Of course.” He hung up the phone as she was assuring him that she would do what he wanted. She stared at the handset for a long moment, trying to figure out how she was going to fix her mistakes.

Very gently, she cradled the receiver against the wall. Swallowing she turned around and faced Kitty and Steven, both of whom were staring at her with alarm and concern. “It’s all right,” she said to them breathlessly. She gave them a smile that she hoped would reassure them, but the matching looks on their faces leaned more towards alarm. She pulled the smile from her face and said softly, “Excuse me. I’m suddenly not very hungry anymore.”

“Jackie, honey,” Kitty said before Jackie could turn to enter the living room. Jackie had managed to turn her face away from Steven and Kitty, hiding the fear at what she had done and how it would impact her friends, her family. She had screwed up and now she would need to pay the piper. Kitty wasn’t about to let her run off without an explanation. “Jackie, what’s going on? Who is Nick? And why do you look so upset?”

Jackie felt her heart seize in her throat. Her two lives were merging before her very eyes and she didn’t want them to. She wanted Point Place and California to remain two separate pieces of who she was, remain distant from one another. This was all her fault. She had known that coming to Point Place was a bad idea and yet, she couldn’t stop herself.

She swallowed noisily, still careful not to look at either Kitty or Steven. “I’m not upset, Mrs. Forman,” Jackie lied. “I was just surprised by the phone call.”

“Who’s Nick?” Hyde demanded with more menace in his voice than he had intended. Jackie hunched her shoulders even more, as though she had done something wrong. Hyde moved a few steps toward her, drawn in by her body language.

She felt like she was on a runaway train and there was no way off. She could see her two lives crashing into each other and the resultant explosion was going to destroy her. She took in a breath. Her lungs hitched halfway to full and she turned her head slowly, looking at Steven and Kitty. They both looked concerned, confused.

She bit her lower lip unintentionally before finally letting out her breath slowly. “Nick is my husband,” she said finally.

Kitty and Steven shared a bewildered look. “Husband?” Kitty demanded shrilly. As the word echoed across her skull, Jackie felt like she wanted to fall through the floor. She wanted to just hide forever. She didn’t want Nick to come here at all. From the corner of her eye, as Kitty yelled, “husband,” a second time, she could see a look of pure venom pass across Steven’s face.

She felt badly for not telling them the truth at the offset, but she had so desperately wanted to keep her life to herself. She didn’t want to get sucked back into the love and affection of her life in Point Place. She didn’t feel like she deserved that sort of blind love. She should have known that, like a mold, her friends would start growing on her again. And here she was, feeling guilt at what she had put Nick through coupled with the guilt of lying to her friends.

Jackie’s eyes flickered back to Steven for a moment. He looked like he had just solved a puzzle as something she couldn’t fathom clicked into place. She swallowed and added, “He will be picking me up this afternoon. That was why he was calling.” Kitty stared at Jackie with big, round eyes. The look on Steven’s face she couldn’t even begin to interpret. She looked back at the kitchen door, turning away from them both. “Now, if you will excuse me. I am suddenly not feeling very well.”

 

 

Hyde slid into an empty seat at the kitchen table, feeling like yesterday’s leftover batch of moldy bread. The news that Jackie was married just kept bouncing through Hyde’s head like a ball. He couldn’t fathom that Jackie had not only gotten married while in California, but had failed to mention it. She hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring or engagement ring in all the time she had been here.

He felt like the rug had been ripped out from underneath him. He could picture Jackie getting married – that wasn’t the surprising part. She had pushed enough for both Kelso and himself to marry her that it had surprised him _more_ by the fact that she hadn’t been crowing about a husband when she had arrived. The fact that she would keep that a secret didn’t make sense to him…

Unless it had something to do with the bruises he had seen.

The thought made him ill. His stomach clenched spasmodically at the idea that Jackie had married and the asshole she was shacked up with was abusing her. Had he always hit her? Had she known what she was getting into before they had married? Or was this a recent addition to the newlywed bliss – were they even really newlyweds? When had she married this Nick person anyway? Was the abuse why she had come back to Point Place? The _real_ reason why she had come back.

He could barely get his head to focus, never mind the fact that Mrs. Forman kept shrilly demanding “husband” while his mind roamed. He felt like shrilling it himself.

A part of him had hoped that Jackie had been holding out hope that he would turn himself around and that she would be willing to start back over when she learned the truth. Their pitch black confessional the night before, coupled with her request that he sleep beside her, had ignited a flame that he had thought had been quashed. He wanted her still. He loved her still. Maybe he had never stopped; maybe he had tried to drown it in alcohol and pot but had been unsuccessful.

“Did you know she was married, Steven?” Kitty asked, sitting down beside him at the table. She looked as surprised as he felt.

“No,” Hyde admitted. “She didn’t seem to want to talk about her life in California.” That seemed like a poor excuse though to him. If they were her friends, shouldn’t they have known?

Kitty nodded, a worried frown on her face. Her eyes kept wandering towards the kitchen door. She seemed to be as dazed as Hyde felt. “I just don’t understand why she would keep this to herself. I would have thought that she would _want_ to share this happy news with us.” Kitty looked at Hyde, her face awash in confusion. “Why would she keep this to herself, Steven?” She asked him.

He didn’t have an answer for her. When the silence grew thick between them, she stood up from the table and wandered away into the living room. Hyde watched her go, trying to fathom the same things she was as well as the possibility that Jackie was being hurt by the man who was coming to pick her up this afternoon. Could he save her before then?

Hyde buried his face in his hands. He sat there like that for a time, trying to march through the wild strands of his emotions. He wanted to march upstairs and yell at Jackie. He wanted to run to the bar and grab the first bottle his fingers found. He wanted to go upstairs and curl up behind Jackie, begging her not to leave again or if she did need to leave, not with someone who was obviously hurting her. He wanted to punch this Nick person in the face until he was dead at his feet. He wanted a cold, stiff drink and oblivion.

Hyde lifted his face out of his hands and glanced around the kitchen like he had never seen it before. He was seeing it through the wash of his own emotional output at the news that the love of his life was married, that she was leaving that afternoon, and the possibility that she was married to a world class jackass that put himself to shame. He shakily got to his feet and paced the length of the counter for a few moments, trying to find a way to get rid of the excess energy that his wild emotions were setting off.

Finally, unable to get the idea of a cold drink out of his head, Hyde let himself out of the kitchen through the sliding glass door. Outside on the porch, he stopped. He wasn’t really sure what to do with himself. He wasn’t sure how to fix this, or if he even could fix it. He just needed someone to tell him what to do, he realized. If someone else with a better head for all of this emotional tangle could just tell him what to do then maybe, just maybe he wouldn’t fuck it all up again.


	10. need someone to hold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackie can't keep the truth hidden away forever.

Though her stomach felt queasy and she wanted to just hide in a dark room for the rest of the day, Jackie slipped quietly down to the basement looking for Hyde. She needed to find something to wear that would please her husband and as much as she felt like a heel to be asking her ex-boyfriend for the assist, he was the only one around who could give her a ride to the mall without, she hoped, asking too many invasive questions.

When she finally got downstairs, she was startled to find his favorite chair empty and the television off. She had expected him to be in his usual place. She wasn’t sure where to look for him if he didn’t stick to his usual haunts. It occurred to her that after the last three years, she didn’t really know what his usual haunts were.

She wandered back into his bedroom. It had changed since the last time she had been down there.

The boxes that had taken up half the room had been removed. Instead of his cot, there was a single twin sized bed in a little frame. There was no headboard or footboard. He had a table beside the bed with half used candles across the top. There was a bureau and a small chair to sit in where his cot used to be.

She didn’t know why she was surprised to see that his room had changed. She couldn’t understand why she had expected everything to remain the same. But nothing had remained the same since she had been gone. Eric and Donna were still in love, of course, but they were both committed not only to one another, finally, but towards their future. Mrs. Forman and Mr. Forman were still deeply in love with one another, but they seemed to be less involved in the kids’ lives.

And Steven, her Steven, he had changed, too. He wasn’t the same two-dimensional asshole who she had fled from three years before. She could tell that he was damaged, maybe, but he was on the mend. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, either, which was as startling as everything else. She could see into the pale blue windows of his soul and that, more than anything, frightened her.

It had been a boon with the lights off in the middle of the night. She didn’t have to look into his pale blue eyes and see what was happening in them. She could pretend that he was still the same old Steven, willing to keep her a deep, dark secret than to sacrifice anything to actually be _with_ her. It was easier to think of him that way, but she had to admit that he wasn’t like that anymore.

She sat down on his bed and buried her face in her hands. When had her life fallen apart? She could feel the broken threads pricking underneath her scalp and across her aching back. She wanted to hide in the darkness down in the basement, hide from her husband, and hide from the big house in the hills and the fancy clothes and jewelry.

She had never wanted to go back to California and a part of her had thought that maybe she could use this side trip as a jumping off point to bigger and better things. But now that she had had a taste of what her home was like again, she realized that she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to be here in Point Place, she realized, not back there or anywhere else.

Was it just Steven that made her want to stay? She didn’t want to admit it, but she was pretty sure that was the case. He was a big part of it at least. She could see the promise he showed since he had changed. And at the end of the day, he was still the one she wanted to run back to the most. How many times had she walked into the basement, her world falling apart, and walked straight into his arms?

He had managed to screw up more times than she could count, but he had always been the first person she turned to when things were going badly. He would say the wrong thing or maybe do the wrong thing, but eventually, he would be able to convey how he felt, what he really meant when he said the wrong thing. He would protect her and keep her safe, even if he messed up a little first.

She wanted her life to make sense, though. Staying in Point Place wasn’t about making sense. She had a big house. She had a good life, but at the end of the day, it always made her feel every one of her imperfections. She didn’t feel as though she belonged there. But she did feel as though she belonged in Point Place with the Formans, Donna and Eric, with Michael and Fez when they could make it down, and of course, with Steven.

Jackie pulled her face out of her hands and looked around the cinderblock room. This had been where her pain had skyrocketed. This had been the place where her heart broke, finally and completely, shattered into a few thousand pieces as Steven went beyond the levels of cruelty. But this had also been the room where she had felt the safest, the most loved. This was one of the last places she had known happiness.

She had to admit that while her romance with Nick had been a whirlwind adventure, she had never truly loved him. It wasn’t like with Steven. What she felt for Nick was lukewarm at best. There had never been any passion in their relationship. Maybe that was why Nick always seemed so displeased with her; maybe he sensed that her heart had always belonged to someone else.

As she came to the realization that, maybe, she had never really stopped loving Steven, he walked into the room. He had his sunglasses in place but slipped them off when he saw her on his bed. She looked up at him, her heart in her throat. She wasn’t sure what to say to him now that she had realized that she probably still loved him. “Uh, Jackie, can I help you?” He asked her.

“Steven, hi,” she said. Her voice was back to Jackie level tones. This wasn’t the woman who was married to some unknown jerk in California; this was the girl that he took to prom, that he made out with when her shit-heap ex-boyfriend ran off on her, that he had fallen in love with so completely, so deeply that years later he still wasn’t recovered.

Jackie stood up, her hands clasped behind her back. Her legs were twisted and he felt something inside of him snap. The look on her face, the way she was standing there, the fact that she was in his room. Everything seemed to come together and he felt himself walking towards her. He didn’t know what he intended when he got to her. He reached out and brushed strands of her hair back from her face. The ache to take her into his arms, to hold her, to promise to save her from her douchebag of a husband was overwhelming.

The problem was that Steven didn’t know how to be the hero when she wasn’t forcing the role on him. That’s what he was used to. She came over to him and asked him to be the white knight, demanded that he become one. Now she wasn’t asking him to be. But he desperately wanted to get back to that person she had seen him as.

She looked up at him with a little smile. “I came down here to see if you would take me to the mall,” she explained shyly.

“The mall?” Hyde asked, confused. It wasn’t a bad idea, though. He could get her alone, all to himself. He could talk to her about what he had seen and what he suspected. He could tell her that he would keep her safe, that he would protect her. He was sure that he could achieve that.

“I wanted to go,” she said, “but then it occurred to me that I didn’t want to go. I just _thought_ that I wanted to go.”

He frowned at her, not sure what was happening. “Are we still talking about the mall?” Hyde asked uncertainly. He felt like there were too many levels to this conversation and he didn’t know them all. There was something on her face, in the way that she spoke… he couldn’t catch the sense of it.

She swallowed and then stood up on tiptoe, kissing his cheek lightly. “Steven, I’m sorry for not telling you about Nick,” she said softly. “I shouldn’t have tried to keep all of you out of my life. But I thought it was safest for everybody.” She looked up at him. The guilt in her mismatched eyes ate away at him. “Please forgive me.”

He wanted to take her into his arms and tell her that she never needed to ask for his forgiveness. He was the one who needed it; no matter what she said or did, she would never mess up enough to need to apologize especially not to him. Instead he shoved his hands into his pockets.

“Look, Jackie,” Steven said slowly, parsing out the words as he spoke. “I don’t know what your life was like in California. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to tell us what your life was like. I mean, you weren’t really expecting to be hanging out with us, you know?”

“Right,” she agreed, nodding. “I didn’t really mean to see any of you again.” It felt like she had sucker punched him. He moved and sat down heavily on the bed. It hurt to know that she had never had any intention of seeing them at all. He had gotten the feeling that she had intended a quick tour, but the knowledge that her meeting up with everyone was accidental kind of hurt. “Mrs. Forman was kind enough to offer to chauffer me around, but I had no intention of seeing you or Donna or Eric…

“But that was a mistake,” she assured him. She sat back down beside him, seemingly oblivious to the multitude of reactions he was having to her confession. At the top of them all, he still just wanted to take her into his arms. “I realized that I was being stupid by keeping all of you out of my life. I … You may find this shocking, but I haven’t really been able to make many friends in California. At least not friends like you and the gang.

“I miss having you guys in my life,” she admitted. He looked at her and his blue eyes pierced her to her soul. She tore her gaze away from his, worried that she would fall into his arms. “I miss being here.” She swallowed and continued. “When you said that going to Edna’s grave was like closing a book, I thought I understood. I couldn’t leave when I was supposed to because I had unfinished business – you guys, I mean.”

“Is that how you think of us? Of what your life was like here?” He felt proud that his voice didn’t shake with the depth of his pain at the thought that _he_ was just some unfinished business. He couldn’t understand why the sentiment riled him up. It shouldn’t have; it made sense that she would see it that way.

Jackie traced patterns on the blanket of his bed with her right index finger. It looked to him like she was making hearts: typical Jackie. “That’s what I thought last night,” she admitted, “but now I’m not so sure. I think that I couldn’t leave because there is unfinished business, but not in the way that I thought of it. I thought I had to shut the cover on my whole life in Point Place, but I don’t think so anymore.

“I’m beginning to think that maybe I need to write the ending first.” She glanced up at him shyly. “Does that sound stupid?”

“So… what? You want to officially break up then?” He tried to joke, but it came off badly. He felt like he had a hangover.

Jackie giggled. “We did break up,” she reminded him. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just the last time I was here, there was a lot of pain on both our parts. And that’s no way to end a story with hurt and sorrow.”

“Then what are you looking for here?”

She licked her lips and nibbled on the sensitive flesh. He found himself unable to look away. He found himself desperately wanting to lick those very lips. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I really don’t know. I just know that I came here with the intention of just saying good-bye to my father and wound up getting sucked back into this place.” She looked around his basement room with affection. “I don’t really want to go home yet.”

Hyde felt his heart lift. This was his chance, he realized. “We can call your husband then and tell him to come in… what? A week? Two weeks, maybe? Do you think that would be enough time to write the ending?”

Jackie looked down at the floor and slid her hand from the bedspread between them. She clutched her hands tightly between her knees and hunched her shoulders. It was like he was watching her deflate before him. When she spoke, she sounded like that cool, remote person that he didn’t know.

“Oh, I can’t do that,” she said softly. She glanced at Steven nervously and then looked back down at her clenched hands. Hyde couldn’t reconcile this person to the woman who was just telling him that she wanted to re-write the ending. It was like she was two different people. “Nick wouldn’t like it if I stayed. I … My adventure here has put off a very important business meeting.”

Hyde made a rude sound. “So what? It’s not like he needs to be here while you do what _you_ need to do for _your_ well-being.” He was pretty sure he was two steps away from openly advocating that she leave the jerk. At least with her here with him, he knew he could keep her safe from whomever had hurt her.

Jackie nodded and then made a move as though to get off the bed. He reached out and turned her face so that he could finally see into her eyes again. His hand cupped her cheek as he studied her face, trying to fathom what was happening in her head. He watched her as she swallowed almost convulsively as his hand gripped her face. He could almost see both parts of her warring for control: the remote person and the woman he loved.

He figured it was now or never. “Jackie,” he said softly, “let me help you.”

“What?” She whispered. He reached out with his other hand and let his fingers trail gently down her right shoulder. He felt her stiffen under his touch and there was heat in her eyes as she looked up at him. “What are you saying, Steven?”

He sighed. “I didn’t mean to spy on you, but I didn’t know you were in the bathroom this morning. When I opened the door a little bit, I saw… your shoulder,” he admitted finally.

Jackie’s face paled and he thought she looked like she was going to pass out. She tore her gaze away from his and practically threw herself off the bed. “I don’t know what you _think_ you saw, Steven, but I really don’t appreciate you spying on me,” she said venomously. He got up quickly and followed her as she moved toward the door. She had her head bowed, moving away from him in a sort of blind, stumbling way. “I deserve my privacy, you know.”

She was at the door and had the doorknob in her hands. She was stiff as a board as she gripped the door, as though it were a lifeline. In reality, she felt her knees shaking and her stomach flipping itself in knots. She felt like she was going to be sick. “Jackie, it wasn’t like that,” Hyde began.

She waved a hand blindly at him. “I don’t want to hear it at all, Steven. You violated my privacy and now you’re making wild accusations—” She cut herself off with a stamp of her little foot and let go of the door handle, moving out of his room.

Panicked that he was losing his chance, frightened at the thought that he was going to go back into the dull, dark dungeon of his own inner hate, he grabbed her by the forearm and pulled her back into the room. “Jackie, please,” he cried.

She spun back to face him, her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth a grim line. She had lifted her left arm to protect her face, her shoulders hunched against blows that he would never inflict. She didn’t even try to pull her right arm from his, just tried her best to make herself a smaller target, protecting the vital spots with what she had available.

They both stopped like that for a moment, a well-known tableau for abuse victims everywhere. Hyde felt like his heart was breaking at the knowledge that Jackie was in a place he knew so well. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms and keep the world at bay, keep her safe. He had failed to do that when they were together. He only hoped he had the ability to do it now, too many years too late.

“Oh, baby, what has he done to you?” Hyde whispered.

Jackie slowly opened her eyes and saw a wild roll call of emotions flash through Steven’s pale blue eyes before the dice stopped at anger and sadness. She swallowed noisily and then lowered her arm, feeling like a fool.

She had managed to live her life for two years without a damn person knowing, or at least maintaining the perception that they didn’t know, and now, here was her ex-boyfriend, the one who had hurt her the most and sent her away with his cruelty, realizing the truth. Was it because he knew her so well after years of being together? Or was it because, as a victim of abuse himself, he understood the signs?

“Nick hasn’t done anything to me,” she said without conviction. If she said it loud enough, she thought she could make it true. Already, she was trying to spin this. She was trying to think of an explanation that sounded plausible. He had only hinted at the bruise on her shoulder; she didn’t have to come clean about anything else.

“Jackie,” Hyde said quietly. “You’re barking up the wrong tree here. You can try all you want, but _I know_.” She looked into his face, knowing that he was telling the truth, knowing that the jig was effectively up. If this had been Donna or Kelso or anyone else, she could have found something that sounded plausible. But Hyde knew what it was like to live your life, fearing what it was like to wake up the next morning.

She had always wondered what it would feel like if someone she knew and cared about knew the truth. She had thought she would feel relief. She was surprised to realize that she didn’t. She only knew more fear. Here was something else, she realized, that Nick could use against her to get his way. That was the horror of marrying a manipulative control freak; they always managed to find a way to turn something to their advantage.

She found herself robbed of speech at the thought of Nick hurting Steven. She knew, consciously, that Steven could take care of himself. He was no stranger to fights. But in her mind, Nick wasn’t just a large man in tip-top shape, he was a world renowned fighter who could kill with a single slash to the throat. She felt like she couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat as she saw in countless different scenarios Steven dead at her feet.

The hand around her forearm slid up to her shoulder. He clutched her there for a moment and then leaned into her face, making her look him in the eye. He could see the fear on her own pale face and wondered if it was fear of this unknown Nick or if it was fear of something else. “Jackie, I can help you. _We_ can help you,” he amended. “But you have to let us.”

She shook her head spastically at him, her lips compressed into a tight line. “No, no. No one can help me,” she whispered at him. Her face started to crumble but by sheer force of will, Jackie held back the tears that were threatening the back of her eyes. She refused to cry now. If she did, she wasn’t sure that she would be able to stop. She began to shake as she felt like her world was crumpling down around her feet.

For months and months, she had managed to ignore it all. It wasn’t real, she had told herself. Just like the story that her father was in jail – not real. Just like the idea that happily-ever-after didn’t happen – not real. Just like the fact that unicorns and fairies didn’t exist – not real. Just like the idea that her mother didn’t love her, didn’t care about her, and that’s why she went off on a million different “vacations” every year – not real. None of this was real. If she closed her eyes, maybe she would wake up.

But when she opened her eyes, Steven was still touching her shoulder. He was still looking at her with a mix of sympathy and anger. His jaw was clenched tight and she was startled to realize that this tense, pensive man in front of her would never hurt her. A similar look on Nick’s face could elicit all manner of cruelty and a flurry of fists.

“Please,” she whispered to him. She wasn’t sure if she was begging for him to let her go or begging for him to help her.

Steven did the only thing he could think to do. He pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. It was soft and gentle against the five o’clock shadow of his cheeks. Her hair still smelled like a beautiful bouquet of summer flowers and he reached up to run his fingers through the curly strands.

“Jackie, we are your family,” he whispered to the top of her head, “we always have been. We will do anything and everything to help you. I will drive to California and pack up your stuff myself if I have to, but you have to _let_ us help you.” He pulled back a little and looked into her wide, glittering eyes. She looked like she was on the verge of tears. “I know how this can play out and so do you.

“Don’t be a statistic, Jackie.”

She bowed her head low, hiding the shame at the idea that _she_ was a statistic. Didn’t they know who the fuck she was? She was Jackie Fucking Burkhart. She wasn’t some nameless face used to further the women’s movement; she was a tough-as-nails, trend-setting beauty. She could have been the Snow Queen; she could have been a model; she could have been a high-paid sexy news anchorwoman. She could have been anything she wanted to be. She came from money and power. She wasn’t just another hatch mark in the domestic violence surveys.

But all the pep talk did was make her feel that much worse. She couldn’t even imagine what it was like to be the girl who had the confidence oozing from her pores in spades. She had forgotten what it was like to feel like the world was hers and for the taking. Maybe she had never really felt that way. Maybe it had all been a dream.

She felt the tears start to fall and Steven pulled her close, holding her tightly against him. She couldn’t stop them now that she was giving vent to her feelings. The tears kept coming and she found herself barely able to breathe through the waterfall of them. He lured her back to the bed and she climbed into his lap, resting her legs on either side of his hips as she knelt upon the bed, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, burying her tear-stained cheeks into his neck.

Steven felt like he had achieved a breakthrough, not just in this moment but in the whole long horrible business of the last two years. Here was his Jackie, turning to him in her hour of need. He was going to win this time, though. He wasn’t going to fail her. He was going to help her get back on her feet and he would be there, holding her hand every step of the way.

Even as she cried in his arms, giving vent to the volatile emotions she had been holding in, he felt a little lighter.

He wasn’t sure but he thought that this was what the beginning of absolution really felt like.


	11. proud mary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyde works on talking Jackie into getting help.

Embarrassed, Jackie finally disengaged herself from Steven’s neck. It was wet with her tears and so was the neck of his T-shirt. He didn’t seem to mind, continually running his fingers up and down her back in a soothing motion. _She_ minded, though. She couldn’t remember the last time she had let herself get like this. She had learned to keep herself under control, partially because of this man in front of her, and here she was, undoing everything she had taught herself in the last three years.

She sniffled and maneuvered herself until she was sitting on the bed beside him, her cheeks flaming at the knowledge that she had allowed herself to cry all over this near-stranger, forcing him into a role he had not occupied in her life for years. She cleared her throat and pressed her forefingers beneath her eyes, trying to catch the last of her tears.

“God, I must look a complete mess,” she muttered to herself. She knew that it sounded trivial and vain to be worried about how she looked, but she couldn’t help it. She needed something to focus on that wasn’t the fact that her life was a complete mess. Makeup gave her a sense of control in a world where she very often felt like she had little to no control at all.

“You look fine, Jackie,” Hyde assured her. He leaned back across his bed, sliding the drawer out from his end table and pulling out a tissue. He handed it to her with his spare hand as he slid the drawer shut. He waited while she primly placed the tissue beneath her eyes, making sure to soak up any leaking mascara and eyeliner.

Clutching the tissue in her hand and sniffling, she looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“For what?” He asked.

She gestured between the two of them and then to the moist T-shirt he was wearing. “I didn’t mean to cry all over you,” she admitted. “It’s not your job to take care of me.” She had to admit that Steven had a way of holding her when she was upset that made her feel, maybe, like the world would be better when she was finished with her crying jag. It was stupid and foolish, but she couldn’t help but feel that way.

Steven sighed heavily. He turned on the bed so that he could look at her. She was holding the tissue he had given her in her fist, crushing it. He slid his hand from her back to her chin and gently lifted her face until he could see into her moist eyes. “Jackie, don’t apologize for needing to cry,” he said firmly. “And if you ever had a reason to cry, I think this situation kind of takes the cake.”

She offered him a tremulous smile before turning to look away. It hurt Hyde to see how she couldn’t look him in the face for long. He wasn’t even sure if he realized how much she had truly changed in the last few years, or maybe she did know and couldn’t figure out how to stop. This wasn’t the woman he had known and had loved. This was a paper thin facsimile who needed to find herself again.

“So what do we do now?” Jackie said finally.

“The first thing we are going to do is go upstairs and talk to Mr. and Mrs. Forman,” Hyde said firmly.

Jackie looked at him fearfully. “Oh, Steven, I can’t bring them into this,” she said. Her eyes were wide and he could see that it was anxiety over what might happen to him, to the Formans, to everyone else that she knew that was making her say these things. He remembered what it was like, keeping the bad things hidden. He reached out and clasped her hand with his own.

“We need to tell them something, Jackie, when you’re hiding inside the house when your husband shows up this afternoon,” Steven said practically. Jackie flinched visibly and bit her lip. “I think if we tell them what’s going on, you’ll find that they’ll be willing to help you get away from him, too.”

“I just… I can’t,” she said softly. She shook her head. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. This isn’t some high school kid who wants to get into my pants, Steven.” She was referring to the time when he had punched out her date for the Veteran’s Day picnic, Charlie or Chuck. She looked at him hopelessly. “There’s no way that we can win.”

Steven offered her a faint smile. “Well, I can punch him twice then, if you would prefer.”

Jackie rolled her eyes. She was trying to find a way to explain to him why this fight was going to wind up with everyone getting hurt. The more she thought about it, the more she could see everything going wrong for all of her friends if she pursued this idea about leaving her husband. The Formans could lose their house; Eric and Donna could lose their scholarships; Steven could wind up in a ditch somewhere.

She shuddered at the thought.

She knew that Nick was powerful and well respected in his circles. She had known clearly that calling the cops on him when he hit her would do nothing but make things worse for her. How many times had she seen the police commissioner at one of their parties? Nick was one of those guys that you didn’t fight; you just went along for the ride.

Even if he couldn’t really take the Formans’ house away from them or get her friends kicked out of school, there was the very real possibility that he could hurt any of them to get to her. Her heart fled into her throat at the idea. The image of Steven, dead on the side of the road almost undid her. She wanted to cry again.

Desperately, she said, “Steven, I don’t think this is going to work. I think it would just be best if we went to the mall right now and if I found clothes that will be appropriate for Nick.”

Hyde scowled. “What do you mean appropriate? Does he pick out what you wear?”

Jackie nodded slowly, her eyes big and frightened. He could see that the fear wasn’t for herself, but for everyone else. Leave it to Jackie to be in an abusive relationship and worry about everyone else instead of her own well-being. “Of course he does,” she said as if this wasn’t the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. “He knows what looks best on me.”

Hyde ground his teeth together loudly. He wanted to punch Nick in the face more than just twice. “Doll,” he said softly, “we need to go upstairs and talk to the Formans. I know you’re scared. I can feel you shaking,” he added. He leaned over and pulled her closer to him. Her entire body was vibrating. “But we need to get a plan in place for when he shows up this afternoon, right?”

“There’s nothing we can plan, Steven. There’s nothing we can say or do to win this. I should just go home with him,” she whispered.

It just about broke his heart to hear her say that. He leaned into her, pulling her back into his lap. He settled her there and stroked her hair back from her face. He felt like if he could just hold her, then he could show her that she _could_ in fact win this fight, but only if she wanted to. He knew, though, that she was going to continue to come up with excuses. He also knew, from experience, that they would grow more and more flimsy as time wore on.

“The first thing we do is talk to the Formans about what’s going on,” Steven said again. “Then we’re going to have Mrs. Forman take a look at the bruise on your shoulder and just give you a quick once over.”

“Oh, no. I’m fine though,” she assured him, moving until she was staring into his face. Her mismatched eyes were magnetic. He wanted to kiss her so badly. He knew it sounded awful, cheesy in fact, but he wanted to be her Prince Charming. He wanted to ride in on the white horse, armor shining in the sun.

Steven pressed his forehead against hers. “Jackie, are you ready to go upstairs now?”

“No,” she said, sounding more than a little petulant. “I can’t do this, Steven. Please don’t make me do this.”

He sighed. “Don’t make me make you… please, baby,” he whispered to her. He pulled his face back from hers so that he could look into her eyes. He could see the terror in her eyes. He could see it clear as day and he wanted to reach out and scrub it from her. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms, keep her safe from the threat of her own fears. He wanted to climb into her brain and scrub it clean, fix all the bad that had happened to her when he wasn’t there to keep her safe.

The tears were beginning to form in her eyes again and she kept blinking rapidly, trying to push back the overwhelming need to do what Nick demanded. A thought came to her and she said, “Let’s just run,” she said hopefully.

“What?” Steven asked. He was pretty sure he hadn’t heard her correctly.

“We can just run away right now, Steven,” she said. “We can get in your car and go wherever you want to go. We can go to Canada or to Maine or to Texas or anywhere in the entire continental United States. Let’s just go. Let’s go right now.” She jumped up and tugged on his arm, trying to get him to do what she wanted.

Steven stood up slowly, hating himself a little for having to be the rational one. “Jackie, if you run away, you will always be looking over your shoulder.”

“Don’t you _want_ to run away with me?” She demanded.

“That’s not fair and you know it,” Steven chided gently. He reached up and gripped her face in his hands, leaning down so that he could look at her. “I want to do anything I can to make you feel safe and sound, Jackie, but the first step is going to be the most painful. Running away is a temporary fix.

“Let me give you a permanent fix,” he whispered.

The tears were back. She could feel them and she wasn’t sure she could stop if she gave in to them.

She leaned up on tiptoe and pressed her lips against his: a thank you, a form of I love you, and relief all in one. She pulled back from him and couldn’t fathom who this person was, willing to do whatever it took to help save her. “Why are you doing this, Steven? Is this because you still think you need my forgiveness? I told you that I already forgave you.”

“Partly,” he admitted sheepishly. “I know you said you forgave me but here it is: a perfect moment to show you that I’ve changed, that I can be the person you need when you need him.” She could understand that. She had given him a million chances and he had failed almost all of them in some way or another. Now here was another chance, one that she _hadn’t_ demanded that he try and he was fulfilling the part she needed most without her asking.

“The other part is that I know how this can end up, doll,” he whispered. “I know what this is like. If I can save a stranger from this kind of life, I would in a heartbeat. But instead of a stranger, I get to save you.” He shrugged. “It’s almost like a two-for.”

She let out a little laugh. “I’m glad I get to be your two-for, then,” she murmured. She studied his face, his earnest blue eyes. She could see that he meant all of this and she was glad, so glad, that his sunglasses were gone. She could see the truth, his truth, and for a single solitary moment, she felt like they could really best this. She felt truly as though he could actually save her from the mess she was living.

She reached out and took his hand in hers. “Okay, let’s go upstairs,” she said finally.

Relieved that she was finally giving in, Hyde led her out of his room and up to the kitchen. He had been on the verge of throwing her over his shoulder. He needed to not only warn the Formans about what was going to happen but he also needed Mrs. Forman to look over Jackie in her official capacity as a nurse. He needed Mrs. Forman to reassure him that Jackie would recover from all of this.


	12. penthouse pauper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackie opens up to the Foremans.

The Formans sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee together in companionable silence. Mrs. Forman had brought Red completely up to date regarding the news that Jackie was married. Red had seemed bothered by the news while Mrs. Forman wondered what Jackie’s husband was like.

She could only assume that the reason Jackie had kept the happy news to herself was because there was something wrong, or something she perceived to be wrong, with her new husband. Mrs. Forman had said wonderingly, “Maybe he works in a factory, Red. That would be so hard for Jackie to explain after years of telling us she would marry into money.”

While she was trying to picture what Nick must look like, Mrs. Forman noticed the kids coming into the room. She turned a little in her chair to face them as Mr. Forman turned the page in his newspaper. He had gone right back to his newspaper after they talked over the news about Jackie, looking troubled by whatever he was reading.

She smiled at the two of them, wondering why they were holding hands. Instantly, her thoughts jumped to the idea that they were going to announce that they were getting back together _again_. While slightly dismayed at the idea that Jackie would need to get a divorce, Mrs. Forman was also tickled at the prospect. Not only because she would be the first person to know but she had always thought that Steven and Jackie made such a striking couple.

“Mr. and Mrs. Forman, we need to talk to you,” Steven said.

Red slowly lowered his newspaper, taking in the scene before him. His eyes skimmed over the two kids, trying to figure out what that tone in Steven’s voice was trying to warn him of. Steven looking like a pod person without his usual tinted sunglasses holding Jackie’s hand for the first time in years. Jackie looked like she was ready to bolt out of the kitchen at whatever it was they had to say.

Red sighed, wondering what sort of dumbass romance novel he was going to get sucked into now. It had been years since he had to deal with the ongoing shenanigans of Eric and his dumbass friends. Jackie comes back for a single day and already he was going to get sucked back into it…

At least he knew that there was no way Steven could have knocked the poor girl up… or at least, maybe if he had, they didn’t know it yet. The fact that that was a relief to Red made him seriously sit back and consider how much bullshit the kids had put him and his wife through over the years.

Hyde looked down at Jackie who returned his look, her eyes wide and worried. She had a slight frown on her lips and she looked like she was going to get blown over in a stiff wind. Mrs. Forman maneuvered herself until she was sitting beside Red. She gestured for Jackie and Hyde to sit across from them and then waited. The two of them glanced at one another again before sitting down across from the older couple.

Steven opened his mouth to tell them what was happening, but it was Jackie who spoke first. She explained to the Formans who Nick was and how she had met him as a regular customer at a café she had worked at after failing at becoming an actress. She explained that they had gotten married very quickly, which was of course her fault. Her lips seemed to seal shut though when she got to the part where Nick had begun to control her.

Desperately, Jackie looked at Steven, trying to fill in the crevasses she had left unsaid. He didn’t know what to say so he said the only thing he could think of, “He controls her; he manipulates her. He hits her. She can’t go back with him,” he said.

The Formans both looked at Jackie, eyes wide at the admission. They were both looking her over as though trying to see the signs on her face, in her clothes, in how she had presented herself to them. But they didn’t really need to look at her to see the truth. Hadn’t they both recognized that there was something wrong with Jackie the second she had stepped off the plane? They had expected that she had matured, that she had changed in some capacity, but the person who landed in Kenosha wasn’t the girl they had known at all.

“Well, then you’re not going anywhere with that dumbass,” Red said firmly. He flicked his newspaper down on the table with a crack, startling Jackie with his vehemence. It was like the decision had been made all over again. Jackie felt her stomach lurch with anxiety and she felt like she was going to throw up. She looked at the Formans nervously, not sure if Mr. Forman really understood what it was he was getting himself into.

Mrs. Forman nodded. “Yes,” she agreed firmly, reaching out to take Jackie’s hand. “We’ll tell him that you are not going with him no matter what.”

“But Mrs. Forman,” Jackie began, “he’s not going to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“Then I will call the police,” Mr. Forman said, leaning forward to show Jackie that he meant it. “I didn’t invite him here and there is no way he is going to take you off this property without my permission. He can have you back over my dead body.” Red stared at her with that penetrating father-like gaze that she had never known when she had been in contact with her own father. “I will not allow you to go back into a situation where you’re in danger.”

She looked at the older couple with a mix of terror and relief. Here were people who could help her, who were willing to help her. She still couldn’t get the idea out of her head that something terrible was going to happen to them for daring to stand up for her. She thought she should warn them somehow, but didn’t know what to even warn them about.

“Mrs. Forman, Jackie has a bruise on her shoulder that I would like you to take a look at, if you don’t mind,” Steven said into the silence that had enveloped them.

Mrs. Forman stood up, in full nurse mode. “Of course,” she said. “Take off your shirt, dear, so I can have a look.”

“I’ll, uh, just go to into the living room then,” Mr. Forman said uncomfortably. “I feel like I need a stiff drink at the moment.” He stood up from the table, his eyes on Jackie’s. She couldn’t look away from him. “When is he supposed to be here?”

“At three,” she whispered. Mr. Forman looked like a man with a purpose as she spoke. He nodded to himself and then wandered out of the kitchen.

Hyde shifted his chair and looked at Jackie. “Come on, doll,” he murmured encouragingly. “I just want her to make sure that everything is okay.” Jackie looked at him with big, tear-filled eyes. She felt like she was walking into her own humiliation. “It’s okay,” he assured her. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Jackie. I’m right here and Mrs. Forman is a nurse. She sees this sort of thing all the time.”

“He’s right, honey,” Mrs. Forman said cheerfully. “I see all types of injuries come into the hospital! There’s nothing you can show me that will shock me.” Jackie gritted her teeth and nodded at the kitchen table. She knew that she shouldn’t feel embarrassed or nervous about showing the bruises to a registered nurse, but her insides would beg to differ.

In all the time that Jackie had been with Nick, she had only had to go to the hospital once after he had broken one of her ribs. The ER attendant had stared at her injury with a glazed expression as Nick explained with lies about what had happened. That doctor hadn’t been the only one to see her bruises, to see what was going on with her, but no one had truly looked deeper to see what was happening.

Now she was finally in the care of someone who would see the road map of the truth on her body in the bruises that had formed. She wasn’t sure how she had managed to let things get this far.

Closing her eyes, Jackie spun herself in the ladder backed chair that had replaced the soft green tulip chairs. She wound up straddling the high back of the chair to present her back to them. Sniffling, Jackie lifted the hem of her T-shirt up and then pulled it over her head. She shoved the shirt in the chair and then leaned over the back, hugging it to her chest. She pressed her warm cheek against the cool wood, looking for an anchor.

Hyde carefully moved Jackie’s hair out of the way so that they could see the bruise on her shoulder more clearly. It was hidden a little by her black bra strap, but the shape of it was clear. Mrs. Forman paid attention to the yellowish bruise on her shoulder just long enough to assure herself that it was healing properly before she zoomed in on a dark purple bruise over Jackie’s left kidney.

Hyde’s gaze was drawn to the dark mark right over her kidney, feeling ill. He wanted to take out how he felt on the man who had clearly done this to her. He clenched his hands into fists, imagining what it would feel like to punch the unknown cretin out. Before he could get caught up in his own thoughts, he moved close to her ear, murmuring, “You’re doing great, doll. Just a few more minutes, okay?” Jackie nodded, keeping her eyes closed.

Kitty’s lips compressed into a tight line and Steven could tell that she was pretty upset by what she was seeing. “Honey, I’m going to just give this one down here a little touch, okay?” Jackie nodded again. Kitty reached down and probed around the mark before touching the bruise itself, eliciting a groan from Jackie. “Okay, okay,” Mrs. Forman said as Jackie tried to twitch away from her. “I’m done poking at it.

“Do you know when you got the one down here?” Mrs. Forman asked. She was trying not to let on how concerned she was by it.

“I don’t know. Three or four days ago, maybe,” Jackie murmured.

“Have you had any difficulties urinating, Jackie?” Mrs. Forman asked firmly.

“What?” Jackie asked, her eyes opening slightly at the question.

“Well, the bruise is right over your kidney, honey. I need to make sure that everything is working properly.”

Jackie thought about it as she closed her eyes again. “No, no problems. It doesn’t hurt or anything. And it’s not… like weird colored or anything.” In another world, she thought she should be embarrassed about talking about this in front of Steven. But again, she felt safe with him. It didn’t matter where the conversation turned, she always felt comfortable with him nearby. He had a magical quality about him that put her at ease.

The older woman nodded as she registered the young woman’s response. Mrs. Forman gently unhooked Jackie’s bra so that she could get a better look at the healing bruise across Jackie’s scapula. It looked like it was on the mend and she didn’t think she needed to ice it down. Steven quietly pointed out the one on the underside of Jackie’s bicep, which Mrs. Forman glanced over.

“Jackie, honey, are there any more places I need to look at?” Mrs. Forman asked as she went back to the giant bruise over Jackie’s kidney. It worried her. The bruise had to be at least seventy-two hours old and it was still a very deep, dark color. It should have lightened even a little bit.

Sighing and nodding, Jackie pulled away from the back of the chair. She kept her eyes closed and reached down to press her loose bra against her chest. She turned in the chair so that Mrs. Forman could see the purple and yellow mixed bruising that was healing across her midsection. Steven bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. He wanted to hit something very badly.

“Okay, honey, okay,” Mrs. Forman said, easing Jackie back against the chair. “Now, I’m going to get you an ice pack so that we can ice down the one on your lower back. It doesn’t look like you did that!”

“No,” Jackie murmured. She sounded tired, wrung out. She felt that way. She felt empty, deflated like a popped balloon.

Kitty beckoned Steven over to her as she moved toward the freezer. Steven squeezed Jackie’s arm reassuringly before getting up to follow Mrs. Forman. He leaned down as Kitty pulled him closer to her mouth. “Can you get me my camera, please, Steven? I think it would help Jackie with a divorce if we have some documentation. And tomorrow, I think I may take her to the hospital for an exam.”

Steven looked back at Jackie, who looked like she had fallen asleep against the chair. “Is it that bad?”

“I just think it would be in Jackie’s best interest to see a doctor,” Kitty said firmly.

She shooed Steven from the kitchen and then went about putting an ice pack together for Jackie’s back. Though she didn’t think of herself as an expert, she was pretty sure the bruises were mostly from someone’s fists. The fact that someone would inflict that on such a tiny little girl like Jackie just about cut her up.

She wanted to hit this unknown man! In the testicles!

Not only were the bruises concerning with their tantalizing hints at serial abuse, but the look of Jackie’s ribs was also a major concern too. Kitty tried to remember when Jackie had actually eaten something, but couldn’t think of anything beyond the bite of bacon this morning. She couldn’t even really remember seeing Jackie eat anything at dinner the night before.

Jackie looked like she was on the verge of needing to be hospitalized due to malnutrition. There was no question to Kitty, she needed to put on pounds. Jackie had always been small, but the amount of weight that this little girl had lost since last she had seen her was dangerous. She was severely underweight. Mrs. Forman finished packing the ice together and wrapped it in a towel as Steven came back with the camera.

“Jackie, honey,” Mrs. Forman said as she walked around the kitchen table. Jackie’s eyes fluttered and opened. She looked back at her dully. “I need to take pictures, dear, of your bruises.”

“Why?” Jackie asked stupidly. Mrs. Forman took the camera from Steven’s waiting hands and handed him the ice pack.

“Well, I need to be able to have evidence of what these bruises look like,” Mrs. Forman said. Jackie frowned at her, still not able to understand why a picture was so important. “This is in your best interest for when… well, for when you and Nick get a divorce.”

Jackie shook her head, looking terrified. The idea that someone would have evidence of what she had been through, of the idea that this could be used against her, terrified her. What if Nick found out that she had shared these private things with others? Part of her didn’t believe that she would actually be able to get away from him. If he found out… the thought was enough to make her seriously re-think all of this.

Steven wasn’t sure if it was because she was scared at the idea of divorcing the asshole or if she was just terrified of having evidence about what he had done to her. Taking a gamble, Steven decided to go with the idea that she was worried about the pictures themselves as opposed to the actual divorce. “Don’t worry, Jackie,” Steven reassured her. He sat back down beside her, resting his hand on hers. “Mrs. Forman isn’t going to show anyone the pictures except a lawyer, right, Mrs. Forman?”

“Oh, of course,” Kitty said. “I would never do that to you, honey.” Jackie relaxed at that and then after a moment, nodded. Mrs. Forman took pictures of the bruises across her concave abdomen before she moved to the bruises on her arm and back. For good measure, Kitty took a few shots of Jackie’s rib cage. When she was finished, Mrs. Forman carefully refastened Jackie’s bra for her.

When the bra was back in place, Jackie wrapped her arms protectively around the back of the chair again. Steven scooched her close to him and then as gently as possible rested the towel wrapped ice pack against the bruise on her kidney. Jackie winced and let out a little moan as the rough fabric and cold made contact with the sore spot. Steven apologized, but kept the ice pack in place. Jackie moved in closer to him resting her weary head against his shoulder as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She buried her face in the soft spot of between his shoulder and neck and relaxed into his embrace.

Mrs. Forman left the kitchen to give the roll of film to Red to be developed as soon as possible. While she did that, Steven held Jackie against him, running his fingers against the exposed flesh of her right bicep. He rested his head against the top of hers, trying to decide what they were going to do when Nick showed up.

Now that the truth was out in the open, now that the Formans were going to help with getting rid of him, he knew that he wouldn’t be allowed near him when he showed up. The Formans knew that, at this point, they needed the law on their side and it probably wouldn’t go over well to start a brawl in the middle of the yard. It would be satisfying though.

As he sat there, holding her in the protective shelter of his arms, keeping the ice pack against the spot on her kidney, he could at least fantasize about what he _wanted_ to do to this unknown jerk. But at the end of the day, this was a battle that he couldn’t fight for her. He could stand beside her as she fought it with lawyers and the police, but he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. He felt almost impotent by the need to follow the letter of the law.

Life seemed so much simpler when he was just a hooligan.

Mrs. Forman came back into the kitchen and began pulling pans out of the cabinets. She had the determined look of the stress baker on her face and Steven was pretty sure they were going to be plied with sweets. He thought that Jackie could eat the entire first batch of whatever it was she made for them. Just so long as she put a little weight on where she needed it most.

Eric let himself in to the kitchen through the sliding glass door and froze when he saw Jackie’s exposed back. He couldn’t help but see the ice pack Hyde was pressing against her, couldn’t help to see the yellow bruise fading underneath the strap of her bra.

He stared at the two of them, unable to figure out what the hell he was seeing. Even though, consciously, Eric knew that the yellowing on a bruise meant that it was old, his mind immediately went to the idea that something had happened between the two of them, something not good. “Hyde, what the hell did you do to Jackie?” Eric asked, confused.

Mrs. Forman glared at her son as Jackie let out a yelp and pulled back from Steven. She dove for her T-shirt and pulled it over her head, embarrassed that Eric had seen what she had only wanted to keep between herself, Mrs. Forman, and Steven. She could feel tears prickling at the back of her eyelids again. It was like those dreams where you ended up at school completely naked in front of your classmates, only there was no way for her to wake up.

Kitty stormed over to Eric and shoved him out of the open sliding glass door so that she could have a private word with her son outside. Steven held out his empty hands having dropped the ice pack when Jackie jumped up at Eric’s entry. Jackie stared at the sliding glass door, panting a little. Steven could sense that she was like a caged animal and wanted to run.

Showing her that his hands were empty, he leaned over and placed a hand on hers. “Sit down, Jackie,” he said softly. “Let me ice down your back.” Before she could offer an objection he said, “I’ll keep the ice pack underneath your shirt, okay? No one will see anything else, I promise.” He swallowed, waiting for her to react. “I’m sorry, doll. I didn’t realize that he would be home early today. If I had, I would have made you put your shirt back on.”

Jackie nodded jerkily, recognizing that he would have warned her if he had known Eric would walk in at any moment. After a moment, she moved back to straddling the back of the chair. He picked up the ice pack and wrapped it back into the towel Mrs. Forman had provided for the job. Still moving slowly since she seemed a little skittish still, he reached out and pulled her back, murmuring into her ear gentle nonsense.

He slid the ice pack underneath her shirt, careful to push the oversized T-shirt down over the towel he was holding. As Eric came back in to the kitchen, his face pale and frightened, Hyde shot him a dirty look as he murmured endearing nonsense in Jackie’s ear.

 _Sorry_ , Eric mouthed as he sat down across from the two of them. He stared at Jackie, trying not to see the bruises he had caught a glimpse of as he entered the kitchen, as Hyde had dropped the ice pack to the ground and the glaring dark purple mark over her kidney had pierced into his brain. Mrs. Forman immediately went back to the counter and pulled out her cook book, looking for just the right recipe to help her get through the next few hours.


	13. take it like a friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Donna learns the truth while Hyde does his best to take care of Jackie.

Donna sat on top of the Vista Cruiser, staring at her boyfriend as though she couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Jackie? No way,” she said. She took a sip of the soda in her hand, unable to see Jackie as someone having been in an abusive relationship. “She would rack a guy before he so much as breathed on her hair,” Donna pointed out.

“Yeah, well maybe that was true of the _old_ Jackie,” Eric pointed out, “but we don’t really know _this_ Jackie, do we?” Donna hated to admit that it made a certain kind of sense.

The Jackie that had gotten off the plane in Kenosha wasn’t the same young woman who had left them in a huff after some unknown moment between her and Hyde. The person who had come to say good-bye to her father wasn’t the girl who had made her listen to ABBA all night when she moved in, the girl who would call her “lumberjack” because of her height and her plaid shirts, the girl who loved roller disco and Hyde. Hadn’t they all admitted that whoever she was the person who had landed wasn’t the Jackie they knew?

Donna took another thoughtful sip of her soda. She couldn’t figure out what could have possibly happened between then and now. What had changed Jackie so fundamentally that she would stay in a marriage where she was hit for saying the wrong thing or dressing the wrong way? How in the world had any of this happened? Didn’t Jackie know that when a man hit a woman he was no man at all?

“I just can’t picture it,” Donna admitted.

Eric looked at her, clearly exasperated. The look on his face was intense. “Trust me, it’s definitely happening,” Eric said. He closed his eyes and shuddered at the sickly yellow bruise he had seen, the second one on her lower back that was so dark it had looked black in the light. He shuddered again. “It’s definitely real, Donna.”

“I didn’t mean that I didn’t believe it,” Donna said. “It’s just hard to picture any Jackie, even this weird coldly formal Jackie letting a man put his hands on her.” She had to admit that Eric was right. What did they really know about _this_ Jackie? The new and improved pod person was happily wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt two days in a row. “So what is she going to do then?”

Eric was pacing back and forth in front of her, a look of worry on his face. “Well my dad laid down the law, I guess,” Eric said finally. “Red told Jackie that she could go back to her husband over his dead body.”

“Did Red mention putting a foot in this guy’s ass?” Donna asked.

“He didn’t say it implicitly but it was probably implied.” Eric glanced down at his wrist watch. It felt as though they were all expecting a countdown to begin an hour out from Nick’s arrival, just like on New Year’s. “Jackie seems to think that some bad shit is going to go down when my dad kicks him off the property.”

“Well that would make sense,” Donna said thoughtfully. “What man is going to want another man meddling in his business? All guys are, at heart, territorial control freaks… some more than others.”

“Hey, I am not like that at all,” Eric snapped.

“Yes, dear,” Donna said smugly.

With a glare, Eric snagged her soda from her hands and drank half the bottle before handing it back. He hopped onto the hood of the Cruiser to sit beside her, his feet resting against the front fender. “Hyde says that Jackie is terrified of whatever is going to go down when this guy shows up,” Eric continued. “He’s keeping her quiet and trying to get her to eat something.” Eric sighed. “You should have seen her ribs, Donna. It was like a xylophone. You could have played off her ribs.”

Donna shivered. “Is she anorexic?” Donna asked quietly. Jackie had loved food and her own comfort when they had been best friends. She couldn’t imagine Jackie no longer eating food, denying herself the very things that she had always liked best.

“I don’t know,” Eric said, “but it’s got my mom worried enough that she’s taking Jackie to the hospital tomorrow.”

“Wow,” Donna muttered. Donna tried to imagine what she could do to help her friend through all of this, but she wasn’t sure if she could even help. Jackie hadn’t come clean about any of this to her. Maybe that meant that Jackie didn’t _really_ consider them friends anymore. As it was, the way Eric told it, it sounded like the only reason that this had all come to light was because Hyde had accidentally walked in on her in the bathroom. “How could she keep this from us?” Donna grumbled.

“Well, I may be wrong here, but I don’t think it’s the usual nature of an abuse victim to shout about it from the rooftops,” Eric snapped.

Donna felt like an ass. She was thinking about how all of this impacted _her_ and how this affected _her_ needs. She wasn’t thinking about this in the way that a friend of Jackie’s should be. She finished her soda to hide her own discomfort with herself. When the bottle was empty, she handed it back to her boyfriend. “You’re right, Eric. I just can’t believe this is really happening. I just can’t believe that Jackie…” She trailed off. She didn’t know how to finish the sentence without sounding like a bigger jackass.

“Imagine how I feel, Donna. I thought Hyde had hurt her,” Eric said.

Donna smirked for a moment. “Well, I guess on the high and low scale of who is the bigger worst best friend ever, you win this round.” Donna thought about what classes she had tomorrow, feeling like she needed to go with Jackie to the hospital. She could be there to relieve the tension and maybe she would dress in a plaid button down just to see what sort of reaction, if any, Jackie would give. “Maybe I’ll go with them to the hospital tomorrow,” she said out loud.

“I don’t know, Donna,” Eric said, glancing up at the second floor. Steven had taken Jackie upstairs for a nap after she had refused to eat any of the cupcakes Mrs. Forman had baked for them. The look of worry on Mrs. Forman’s face continued to mount with each passing minute it seemed and she had pulled out a bottle of wine to go with her baking spree. “Jackie freaked when I walked in and saw…”

“I’m her friend, Eric,” Donna said firmly. “I’m going to be there for her. I don’t care what it takes. I know that things weren’t the best between us before she left and there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t know about Jackie, but I’m going to be support her.” Donna gave him a look that brooked no argument.

 

 

Hyde set the cooled off towel onto the night side table in Laurie’s room. He rolled back onto his side, absentmindedly rubbing Jackie’s back in a static pattern. He made sure he missed all the bruised areas, keeping his hands well away from where he might accidentally hurt her. He glanced at the wall clock, feeling like he was going to burst if three o’clock didn’t come soon enough. They still had hours to wait until the asshole finally decided to show up.

She seemed calmer now that she was out of the kitchen, away from Mrs. Forman’s stress baking and Eric’s uncomfortable silence. She had her eyes closed still but her breathing was more even. He didn’t think she was sleeping, just resting her eyes. He wished he could get her to eat something. The look on Kitty’s face when Jackie had said that she wasn’t hungry had been worrisome. He knew that if they didn’t get her to eat, it was possible Jackie would wind up hospitalized.

“What if I go down to the Hub and get a big bucket of fries?” Hyde offered. He had tried, off and on, since bringing her upstairs to entice her appetite but she had refused all of his offers so far. He was kind of getting desperate. How the hell was he supposed to take care of her if all of his attempts were rebuffed?

Jackie sighed and rolled over to face him. She opened her eyes a little and looked into his face. She reached out and took his hand into hers, squeezing it. “I’m just not very hungry right now, Steven,” she said again. “I’m sure that once… once Mr. Forman speaks with Nick that my appetite will come back.”

Steven sighed. “Jackie, when was the last time you ate something substantial?” He was trying to remember how long a person could go before they starved to death. Was it three days without food or three weeks? Why hadn’t he paid attention in health class?

“I had lunch before I came to Point Place yesterday,” she pointed out.

“And what did you have for lunch?”

Jackie shifted uncomfortably, her eyes moving away from his gaze. “Well, I’ve been on a diet lately,” she admitted, “so I’m taking in fewer calories.”

Hyde stared at her, trying to process what he had just heard. “What the hell are you doing on a _diet_ , Jackie?” He demanded.

“Nick bought me a dress and it was a size too small,” she began. She stopped when she saw the thunderous look on his face. She didn’t cower from him, but sort of seemed to shrink in on herself. She stopped speaking, her eyes going blank. Hyde stared at her, wondering if this is what she did to keep her mind safe whenever she said or did something that upset Nick.

“Baby,” he whispered, pulling her into his arms. He kissed her forehead, feeling like an ass. How could he take his anger out on her? “I’m not angry with you,” he assured her. “I just can’t begin to understand what things were like for you. Don’t worry, okay?” After a moment, she nodded and then moved into his embrace, resting her forehead against the pulse point at his throat.

Hyde started to stroke her back again, trying to keep the rage he felt in check. He wanted to break something. He wanted to break some _one_ really. He wanted to be the first one at the door when that jackass showed up and just start swinging.

How could anyone hurt his Jackie? How could anyone willingly think that it was perfectly acceptable to lay hands on his Jackie, to make her think that she needed to lose weight, to make her feel like she was subhuman? How dare this person continue to breathe the same air as his Jackie?

Hyde winced at the thread of his own thoughts. Everything came back down to this sort of possessive spiel regarding Jackie. And he wasn’t anything to her but the person who had figured out that something was wrong. He was an ex-boyfriend who was doing what he could to help her, partially because he had a pulsating need to but also because someone needed to step in and help her out of this mess.

He told himself that he was getting worked up over something that he didn’t really have a right to be worked up about. Just because he still loved her and probably would continue to love her, like her stupid damned fairy tales, didn’t mean that he had a right to think of her like she belonged to him. The only right he had was the ones she was giving him, letting him hold her and letting him do his best to make her feel safe for a while.

He had to keep telling himself that he was looking too deeply into this and he shouldn’t. There was no telling where things would wind up when everything was said and done. There was no telling if her getting away from this asshole would even take. Hadn’t he read somewhere that abused spouses had a high rate of going back to their abusers?

He continued to rub her back gently, staring up at Laurie’s ceiling. After what seemed like an eternity, Jackie slowly leaned up on her elbow to peer down at him. He looked into her face, waiting to see what she had to say. “Thank you, Steven,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I don’t know if I said that yet and before things get bad like I know they’re going to, I thought I would just tell you that.”

“Jackie, I’m just doing what anyone would do,” he said lamely.

She snorted softly. “No, you’re not,” she pointed out. “I know plenty of people who probably had an idea about what was going on at home, but no one tried to help me like you are.” She leaned in and kissed him lightly on the lips. “So thank you, Steven. And no matter what happens, I just want you to know that I’m grateful for you.”

He reached out and slid his fingers through her hair. The look she gave him was the same look he had seen in her eyes so many times: hope, awe, gratitude, support, affection. It was all there and it was almost too much. He thought he was going to burst into pieces. He had done so many horrible things to her and yet, she could still look at him like that. He didn’t know how she could, even after all this time, forgive him and care about him.

He felt overwhelmed with the depth of his own emotions. Without thinking, he leaned in and kissed her; a gentle brush of his lips against hers. She responded to his tentative kiss with a fleeting flicker of her tongue. He opened his mouth to her probing and sucked her tongue into his. They fell into a well-known rhythm; it was like relearning how to ride a bike. It came flooding back the longer they kissed.

Hyde couldn’t believe she was really kissing him back.

After a moment, she pulled back and offered him a slight frown. She bit her lower lip in that anxious way she had developed since the last time they had been lovers. He wanted to reach out and daub her lips with his tongue, take her into his arms, and remind her what it was like to be with a real lover.

“I’m sorry, Steven,” she said softly. “I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have responded to your kiss. That was awful of me. I mean, I’m married,” she reminded him.

He was more amused than anything else by her reasoning. He had been sort-of married once and they had been lovers during all that time. It seemed like a strange double standard that she was living by, letting a man get away with cheating but a woman needing to remain circumspect in the marriage.

But that’s when it hit him. It _wasn’t_ a double standard. She had known that her mother had numerous lovers, countless affairs. This was, he realized, Jackie’s way of making sure she didn’t turn out to be just like her mother. He remembered the first time Jackie had whispered in the dark of night that her one biggest fear was turning out just like her mom.

“I should be the one apologizing,” Hyde offered. “I’m trying to comfort you while we wait and I’m taking advantage of you.”

Jackie let out an unladylike snort as she moved out of the shelter of his arms. For a moment, he felt bereft. It was stupid. She was still right in front of him. “Trust me, Steven,” she said as she turned her back to him. “You’re not taking advantage of me.”

He wasn’t sure, but that sounded an awful lot like a declaration of lust. He could work with that... when the timing was right.


	14. keep on chooglin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackie thinks about what her future could look like.

She didn’t know how he had managed to talk her into eating anything. She didn’t feel very hungry at all and yet, she was letting Steven lead her back downstairs and into the kitchen. Mr. Forman was sitting in the living room, watching something on television as they passed by. Mrs. Forman was working on cupcake batch number 17, or so it appeared, when they entered through the swinging door.

“Hi, Mrs. Forman,” Jackie said with forced enthusiasm. Her stomach felt like a gorge lined with a mine field. One false step and she was liable to explode. “I think I’m ready for your cupcakes now.”

“Oh, _good_ ,” Mrs. Forman said happily. She pulled out a plate and placed two vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting down, handing it out to Steven as they walked by. Steven took the plate and ushered Jackie back to the kitchen table. He set the plate down and went back to the refrigerator, getting out the milk. There was no way Jackie was going to eat some of Mrs. Forman’s cupcakes without an ice cold glass of milk to go with it.

Jackie looked at the cupcake thoughtfully. It looked so innocuous, so simple. All she had to do was put it into her mouth and eat it. But in the back of her head, she kept hearing Nick talk about how her fat ass couldn’t get into the dress he had bought for her. It was a size too small and no matter what she did to slim down to get into it, her ribs were too big around for her to zip up the dress. Fuck him, she thought vehemently.

She took a bite and closed her eyes. Her taste buds seemed to come alive under the assault of the baked good coupled with the sweet chocolate frosting. She couldn’t remember the last time she had such delicious baked goods. Nick would order from one of the fancy bakeries in the area when they entertained and those fancy cupcakes couldn’t even compare to what she was eating. “God, Mrs. Forman, this is the best cupcake I’ve had in years,” Jackie assured everyone’s surrogate mother, her mouth full as she spoke.

Mrs. Forman grinned at the young woman, pleased with the compliment. More than anything else, though, she was pleased that Jackie was actually eating something. That was the better compliment. She had worried that they would not only need to do a full exam on Jackie’s body tomorrow, but have her hospitalized for a bit. The telltale signs of anorexia were all there, but she was hoping that getting Jackie away from that terrible man would be enough to start the road to recovery.

Steven placed two cups of milk down on the table and then went back to get his own cupcakes from the growing batch Mrs. Forman had made. If she kept this up, she was going to need to go out and purchase eggs for breakfast in the morning. Jackie had made a sizable dent in her second cupcake by the time he sat back down. Without thinking, he placed his second one on her plate so that she could eat that as well.

“You know, Jackie honey, I can make you anything else you might want if you’re really hungry,” Mrs. Forman offered.

Jackie looked up from the cupcake she was in the middle of devouring. She swallowed down the last bite before responding. “Oh, no, Mrs. Forman,” Jackie said. “I don’t want to put you out.”

Hyde looked at Kitty’s face and cut in. “Jackie, I feel like I should remind you that Mrs. Forman’s second job in life is to take care of everyone who walks through her door. You’re not going to put her out if you want something more substantial than a cupcake.”

Jackie looked down at her plate, trying to decide what she wanted if anything. She hadn’t thought she was hungry until she had placed the cupcake in her mouth. And then before she had known it, the first one was gone and she was in the middle of polishing off her second one. “Well,” she said slowly. “I could use an apple maybe.”

Mrs. Forman and Hyde both stared at her like they couldn’t understand the words that were coming out of her mouth. “I haven’t had a piece of fruit since I left California yesterday,” she defended herself nervously.

“I’ll just make you a BLT,” Mrs. Forman said as though Jackie hadn’t spoken. “There’s some left over bacon from this morning and you can’t go wrong with lettuce and tomato.” Mrs. Forman wiped her hands off on her apron and began pulling out the fixings. She glanced at Hyde and pulled out four slices of bread to get the sandwiches started.

While she was making the sandwiches, Mrs. Forman decided she need to broach the subject of Jackie going to the hospital. She hadn’t actually told Jackie that she was going, but she had a feeling that it was going to be a fight. She needed to take care of her wayward lamb and that meant taking her down for a full exam.

“Jackie, honey, I want you to come down to the hospital with me tomorrow,” Kitty said as she sliced a tomato for the sandwiches.

“Why?” Jackie asked around the mouthful of Hyde’s second cupcake.

“Well, sweetie, I think you should just have a doctor look you over and give you a clean bill of health, all things considered.” Kitty finished the tomato and pulled the head of lettuce over to her. “When was the last time you saw a doctor, honey?”

Jackie barely had to think about it before she zoomed in on the last doctor she had spoken with. She didn’t think that an OB/GYN was the type of doctor that Mrs. Forman was referring to, though. She skimmed her memories gingerly, trying to remember the last time she had seen someone in a neat lab coat with a stethoscope around their neck.

She couldn’t in all honesty remember. After the abuse began with Nick, she had been frightened of going to a doctor. She had been terrified that the doctor would know what Nick had been doing to her and report it to someone. As if those fears weren’t enough to send her over the edge with anxiety, she had also been worried that the doctor wouldn’t say anything at all if they saw the bruises.

In all the time they had been together, she had only had to go to the ER for the abuse once. And her fears that the doctor wouldn’t say or do anything had been the more realistic fear she had discovered. The tired doctor with the stethoscope around his neck in the pale blue scrubs had taken one look at her injured rib and then set it, handing over a prescription for pain medication to her husband instead of to her. He hadn’t even asked her how she had hurt herself and Nick’s excuse had barely registered on the doctor’s blank face.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw a doctor,” Jackie admitted.

“So in all this time, you’ve never been?”

“Not recently, no,” Jackie murmured, shaking her head.

Steven placed a comforting hand on hers, squeezing gently. She looked up at him and gave him a small, grateful smile that speared his heart. “Well, then I think it would be best if we go down to a see a doctor tomorrow. I can get you in pretty quickly. I mean, what else is the point in knowing a nurse if they can’t give you a boost, right?” Mrs. Forman laughed her distinctive laugh and Jackie smiled in turn.

Mrs. Forman bustled the sandwiches over to Steven and Jackie before heading back to her stove. She had a batch of cupcakes just about ready to come out. As she slid them out of the oven, Eric and Donna let themselves in through the sliding glass door. Jackie had a mouthful of sandwich as they entered. Her eyes went to first Donna’s face and then Eric’s, trying to see what they were thinking now that they knew about her life in California.

Eric looked like he was more interested in his mother’s overzealous cupcake baking and snagged himself one before grabbing a second for Donna. It was Donna, though, who looked nervous as she sat down across from Jackie. Jackie felt a small hurt at the look on her friend’s face. Was it the knowledge that Jackie had been abused by her husband or the fact that Donna didn’t actually know her anymore?

Jackie knew she would have to make it up to her somehow, but she wasn’t sure how she could. It was easier with Steven, she realized. He wanted to work with her, or so it seemed, to get back to a normal routine between the two of them. With Donna, she wasn’t even sure if the lumberjack wanted to get involved anymore. It wasn’t like she had given Donna any reason to care.

As Jackie took a second bite of her sandwich, she swore to herself that she would make it up to Donna somehow… someday.

Donna watched Jackie eat her BLT sandwich slowly. She was glad to see that she was eating, at least. The way that Eric had made it seem, Jackie was practically on death’s door, ready to keel over at any moment due to lack of nutrition. Donna took Mrs. Forman’s soft singing as she pulled cupcakes out of their pans to cool as a sign that Jackie was doing much better than she had been.

“So, Jackie,” Donna said, “I thought that maybe I could go with you tomorrow to the doctor?”

“Oh,” Jackie said. She placed her sandwich down on the plate beside her and looked over at Steven through her lashes. She had hoped that Steven would come with her, although the prospect of them both, she realized, made her feel better about going to the hospital to be poked and prodded at. She wasn’t sure if she could handle being looked over by some nameless doctor if she was only there with Mrs. Forman.

She had nothing against the older woman and was sure that Mrs. Forman would be helpful during an exam. But something like going to the see the doctor to make sure that she wasn’t on the verge of death because of her husband kind of made her want one of her friends to go with her. She had assumed Steven would come, but maybe he was busy. Maybe Donna would be a good back up?

“Well, if you don’t have any classes tomorrow…” Jackie trailed off, wondering if she sounded like an asshole.

Donna looked at Jackie for a moment. “My classes don’t mean anything to me. Your well-being does,” Donna said firmly.

Jackie felt tears in the back of her eyes again. She took in a deep shaky breath and then nodded. She didn’t think she could speak without it becoming clear that she was a horrible, emotional mess. Even when she had lived here, she hadn’t fallen to tears at the drop of a pin. But the second someone said or did something nice for her now and she was ready to sob. She wished she could climb back into her cool Zen-like persona for moments like these.

“I would like that,” Jackie forced out.

“Steven, are you going to go with us?” Donna asked as she picked at the cupcake Eric had given her. Eric had already said he had to go to his classes tomorrow, something about a test. She didn’t care if it was midterms; nothing was going to make her fail her best friend again.

“Of course I am,” Steven said. Jackie offered him a small smile.

“What about Grooves? Randy is going to need a day off sooner or later,” Eric pointed out.

“Well then, you can relieve him around noon,” Steven retorted.

Jackie glanced between the two friends. “Does Eric work at Grooves with you, Steven?” Jackie asked. She felt like she had years to catch up on again. She was missing out on things she should have known.

Eric rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I help out,” Eric said. “It’s fast cash when I’m not busy with school.”

“Oh, well that’s neat,” Jackie said. “Do you still work at the radio station, Donna?”

Donna nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’m not Hot Donna anymore, but you know, it was just a phase, I think. I’m way beyond such shallow forms of approval.” Eric rolled his eyes as he shoved his cupcake back in his mouth. Jackie suspected he had done it on purpose to keep his mouth closed against whatever commentary he wanted to make against what Donna had said.

“Mrs. Forman said you were taking classes, Steven?” Jackie asked. She figured that now was as good a time as any to get to know her friends again. And besides, if she was asking them questions about their lives here, then she wasn’t worrying about what would happen at three o’clock.

“Mrs. Forman jumped the gun on that one,” Steven remarked. He smiled at Jackie. “I missed the cut off when I signed up. I get to go out for two classes next semester in Madison.”

“Well it seems like everyone’s going to college now,” she said.

She had never considered the idea of going to college. When she had been in high school, she knew she could have gone and done anything but the idea of being a news anchorwoman had just stuck in her head. She couldn’t get it out. It was just something to do, something that flattered her vanity, she felt.

When she had gone to California and wound up as a waitress, even though the labor was menial and the tips weren’t always that good, she found that she actually _liked_ the work. She had been surprised. After working at the cheese place in the mall and absolutely hating it, she had thought that customer service jobs were all awful.

Being a waitress had surprised her though. She liked meeting the regulars and she liked meeting the people just on their way to somewhere else. She liked filling orders and giving directions to passersby. She enjoyed chatting with her coworkers about crabby customers and nothing important.

Besides the idea of being on television or in the movies and waiting tables, she didn’t know what she could do.

“Maybe you could come with me to some of my classes to like audit this semester,” Donna suggested. “If you decide to, you can apply for scholarships and maybe figure out what you want to be when you grow up.”

Jackie smiled. “I honestly don’t know what I want to do with my life,” Jackie admitted.

“You were really good on TV,” Steven pointed out. Eric nodded.

“Yeah, but I realized in California that I didn’t really like it, not like I thought I would. It was just something to do,” she said quietly. She took another bite of her sandwich, trying to figure out what a future without fear of her husband would look like. Maybe she would take Donna up on the offer to audit Donna’s classes. “Auditing a class or two doesn’t sound so bad, though,” Jackie said after she had swallowed. “I might even figure out that college isn’t for me.”


	15. commotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter the husband.

Hyde lifted the oil stained rag from the side of the engine block as he and Red peered into the depths of the Vista Cruiser, eying a job well done. With fresh clean oil in its reservoir, the Vista Cruiser would keep going for a few more miles yet. Hyde unhooked the arm and let the hood fall into place as Red slid behind the wheel to pull the thing off the ramps they used for working on their cars.

After taking the Vista Cruiser off the ramps, Red shut the engine and glanced at his wrist watch. It was three-oh-one by his reckoning and still no damn dumbass in sight. What was this world coming to? Red thought. If a man couldn’t be on time to be told that his wife wasn’t going anywhere with him, then what was the point? This whole world was going to hell in a handcart when a man couldn’t be punctual about being told how far Red Forman was going to shove his foot up their ass.

Hyde eyed the pale green Corvette, wondering if it was time to take it out for a wax. It would pass the time long enough, he figured until the jackass showed up to get told what for. Hyde snagged the ramps out from the driveway and brought them into the perfectly kept garage. He placed them on the bottom shelf of Red’s work bench where they belonged.

He was grateful that Red had agreed to let him wait with him outside. Red had, of course, firmly announced that Steven was not to speak or to look directly at Nick when he arrived. He could stand beside Red while Red ordered the dumbass off his property, but Hyde was only there as back up in case things went badly. The hooligan in him was angry that he was being stifled, but the guy he had become recognized that Red was right: starting a fight with Jackie’s soon-to-be ex-husband was no way to help her out.

Red came into the garage with the container housing the used oil, placing it into the metal trashcan where he stored such things before taking it to the dump. Red put the oil soaked rag on his work bench and then sighed. “That dumbass is late,” Red snapped moodily. “If he doesn’t show up soon, I’m going to lose my patience and shove my foot up his ass the second he gets here.”

Hyde smirked at the idea, enjoying the thought of Red Forman talking about putting his boot in this Nick person’s ass.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a shiny black Lincoln Continental driving slowly down the road, passing the Forman driveway before stopping when they got to the old Pinciotti house. The car began to slowly reverse. “Uh, Red, I don’t think you’re going to have to wait too much longer to do that,” Hyde said, nodding towards the road. Red turned as the black vehicle stopped at the foot of the driveway.

The back door of the vehicle opened slowly and a tall man clambered out from the backseat. The man had a thick head of black hair and a striking profile. He was wearing a well-tailored suit over his wide shoulders. He wore a thin black tie and a pristine white shirt underneath his suit jacket.

Red and Hyde both shared a glance of open disdain as the man stood at the foot of the driveway, a barely concealed sneer on his face. Nick began walking up the driveway purposefully, looking for all the world like he was used to getting his way. Red was pleased to be disappointing him.

Hyde flanked Red as they walked down the drive to meet the man who seemed to like hitting Jackie. Hyde wanted to attack him without a warning, wanted to just punch him in his big jaw and be done with it. He kept reminding himself that Red had demanded a promise that, upon pain of death, he would not act out. He kept reminding himself that Jackie needed him to be less hooligan and more upstanding gentleman. It was so damn hard.

“You must be Nick,” Red said as the pair met with Jackie’s husband about halfway down the drive.

Without preamble, Nick looked to the house: “Where’s my wife? I told her to be ready at promptly three o’clock.”

“She got tired of waiting for you, Nick,” Steven quipped. “She said you must not be coming if you couldn’t show up on time.” Red shot Hyde a warning look, but didn’t say anything in response.

Nick sneered at Steven, obviously not thinking much of him in his T-shirt and oil-stained jeans. “It’s hardly my fault that my incompetent driver got lost in this suburban hellhole.”

Red folded his arms over his chest. “Well, whatever the case may be, Jackie isn’t going anywhere with you.”

Nick turned that sanctimonious sneer on Red. Red looked like he wanted to shove not just one foot, but both of them up the dumbass’s ass. “Who do you think you are? That’s my wife. You can’t keep me from her.” He held up the shiny gold ring on his left ring finger, waving it in front of them both. “This says that she will love, honor, and obey _me_.”

“And this finger says that she doesn’t have to do a damn thing if she doesn’t want,” Red said, flipping Nick off. Hyde wanted to crow. That was the most badass thing he had ever seen Mr. Forman pull off. That was going to have to be stored as one of his all-time favorite memories of living with the Formans. “And she doesn’t want to go anywhere with you, as I said.”

“How _dare_ you?” Nick began. His arms began pumping and he looked like he was going to boil over.

“Hey, man,” Hyde said. He couldn’t help but be shocked that he sounded like he was going to be the voice of reason here. When had that happened? “We told you that Jackie doesn’t want to go with you. And she’s not. So you can either leave of your own free will or we can call the cops and have you removed.”

“Do you have _any_ idea who you’re talking to?” Nick hissed. His face was turning flushed. Hyde wondered if he would go into an apoplectic fit, which would make Jackie’s future a lot less stressful.

Red stared the man in front of him down, clearly not impressed with what he was seeing. “Yeah, I’m talking to a dumbass who gets off on beating defenseless women for fun.” Nick’s face went from lobster red to pale in a matter of seconds. If he didn’t actually have a fit in the driveway, Hyde was sure he was going to have one in the car. “Now as you were told, you can leave of your own free will or the police can help you on your way, so what’s it going to be?”

“You are going to regret this,” Nick told them both calmly. He glanced at the house for a moment, his eyes boring into the windows before he smoothed out the already smooth lapels of his coat. With that, he turned and walked back down the driveway like he didn’t have a care in the world. Hyde and Red watched to make sure that he not only got into the vehicle but that they drove away as well.

 

 

“Oh, man, did you see that?” Eric yelled from the living room window. “My dad _actually_ flipped off some guy who looks like an extra from _The Godfather_!” Eric looked like he was enjoying this the most. Jackie had her eyes closed, her hands covering her face as Donna and Mrs. Forman did their best to comfort her. “That was like the best thing I’ve seen in my life.” He closed his eyes in ecstasy as Jackie pulled her face from her hands. He looked like he was reliving the moment over and over.

When he opened his eyes, he met Jackie’s gaze. He turned to look back out the window, twitching the curtain out of the way. “You don’t need to worry, Jackie,” Eric assured her. “He’s walking down the driveway and now he’s getting into the ritzy car he showed up in. And… now they’re driving away.” Eric turned back to her. “It’s all over.”

“Well, the first part is all over,” Mrs. Forman cut in. “This is just the first step in the process of making sure Jackie is free of that… that… man.” Mrs. Forman rubbed reassuring circles in Jackie’s uninjured shoulder as she spoke. “After the hospital, I’ll see if I can get in touch with the lawyer that Betty Robinson used when she was divorcing her husband. We’ll see what his fees will be and then set up an appointment this week to meet with him.”

Jackie swallowed and felt her stomach heave at the thought of meeting with a lawyer. She didn’t think Nick was going to willingly let her go. And when he learned that she had retained a lawyer – how was she supposed to pay for one though? – wouldn’t go over well, either. She didn’t think he was going to just give up like Eric did. Nick wasn’t the type of man to let something go without a fight.

“I don’t know how I’m going to pay for a lawyer,” Jackie squeaked. “I know that my dad had some money set aside for me, but I think my mom squandered it.” She buried her face in her hands. “I wonder if a lawyer would do a payment plan. I can get a job as a waitress and hoard all my tips for the fees…”

“We’ll figure it out, Jackie, once we know how much the lawyer is going to cost,” Donna assured her.

“Hey, Jackie, you could work for Hyde at Grooves, too,” Eric said, trying to be as helpful as everyone else. “The money isn’t like great by any stretch, but it’s a start, right?” Jackie nodded, latching on to the Eric’s attempt at throwing her a bone. “I mean, you have to actually like _real_ music, though.”

“I don’t listen to ABBA that much anymore, Eric,” she said with a small smile. “Steven won’t have to worry about me ruining his clientele.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Steven said as he and Red entered the living room from the kitchen. He paused before asking, “Why would I have to worry about you ruining my clientele?”

“Oh, by the way, I offered Jackie a job at Grooves while my dad was being _totally badass_ ,” Eric yelled. Like the dork he was, he pumped his fist into the air and Jackie could have cried for how completely like the old Eric that gesture was. It was like even though her life was falling apart, she could latch on to her friends, to the simple normality of Eric being the biggest loser this side of Lake Michigan, to keep her afloat.

“Eric, could you please be a man for five minutes?” Red demanded. Kitty got up from the couch and went over to her husband, kissing him on the cheek.

“Well, for being the hero of this story, I’m going to make your very favorite for dinner tonight,” Mrs. Forman said firmly. The light returned to Mr. Forman’s eyes as he contemplated a dinner with a beautiful slab of just-bloody-enough steak in front of him. Mrs. Forman danced over to Hyde and gave him a hug and a kiss. “And I’ll make sure to get started on _your_ peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies, Steven dear.”

“Um, Mom,” Eric cut in, “I hate to break it to you but this house is already overflowing with sweets.”

“Hey, Forman,” Hyde snapped. “If she wants to make cookies, who are you to stop her?”

Singing to herself, Mrs. Forman danced into the kitchen to get started on Hyde’s cookies. Red walked over to Jackie and said gruffly, “If he calls here again, you come get me, you hear?” Jackie looked up at Red with big, wide eyes and nodded. “I mean it, Jackie. If he calls here, if you see him, if you even think he might be near you, you come and get me immediately or you call the police.”

He turned to Hyde, pointing at him. “And you’re lucky that smart mouth of yours didn’t start anything, Steven,” Red said firmly. “If you see him, if he calls here, if Jackie has a dream about him, you are not to go after him. I know you, Steven. As much as you may _think_ you’re helping by going after him, you’re not.”

“Right,” Steven said, his hands up in front of him to show just how innocent he really was.

He looked at Donna and Eric forcefully before he sauntered out of the living room and into the den.

After Red’s almost warm and fuzzy pep talk, Jackie was ready for a nap. She had been on pins and needles since two o’clock and now that the hard road ahead of her was just getting started, she wanted to sleep. But she had to start planning what her life was going to be like, thinking about jobs so that she could pay the lawyer, and thinking about where her old friends, and of course Steven, fit into the pieces of her life.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I think I’m going to head down to the basement,” Eric said, waggling his brows as he spoke. Donna stood up and nodded her agreement. She thought that Eric was right; they could all use a little relaxer now that the stress of the afternoon was over. There would be more stress on the horizon; why not take a break while they could?

Steven walked over to Jackie and offered her his arm. “Milady,” he said. Jackie snorted softly but took his arm. As they followed Donna and Eric down to the basement, Steven whispered, “Why did Eric offer you a job at Grooves?”

“Well, I’m going to have to figure out how to pay for a lawyer,” she explained. “He said that I could work at Grooves after I said that I could probably find a job as a waitress.” She shrugged, trying not to feel like the next steps in her life were insurmountable. “I don’t know how working as a waitress _and_ at Grooves will be enough, but I guess I’ll find a way.”

“You mean, _we’ll_ find a way,” Steven corrected.

She stopped on the basement stairs and looked into his face. Without thinking, she leaned up and kissed him on the lips. Worried that this was another one of those moments where she would pull away, reminding him that she was married, he didn’t respond right away. She wrapped her arms around his neck and slid her tongue across the line of his lips.

Unable to hold back any longer, he pulled her closer to him and kissed her again. Her lips were soft and gentle. Her tongue tasted like cupcakes and bacon – what a heady mixture. He kissed her until he felt dizzy with it. Slowly she pulled back from him and smiled up at him.

“You’re right,” she murmured against his lips, _“we_ will find a way.” She pulled away from him and then continued down the stairs to the basement, her hand wrapped around his.


	16. wrote a song for everyone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The whole gang is back together again.

“I can’t believe someone would do that to my Jackie,” Kelso said as he sat on the arm of the small couch in the basement. Both he and Fez had shown up just as dinner was winding down, a surprise visit to see Jackie. Since Kelso had already planned on coming down to visit his mother and Fez didn’t have work, the impromptu drive from Chicago was an apparent must.

“Well believe it,” Donna said from behind Kelso. She was sitting next to Eric against the opposite arm of the couch. Fez was sucking down a bag of grape flavored Fun Dip like his life depended on it. “The guy was here and he was a total loser.”

Kelso pushed himself off the arm of the couch and puffed out his chest. “Well, it’s a good thing that I came then,” he assured them all. “Now that I’m here, I’ll be sure to keep her safe tonight.” He flexed his bicep, making sure to show his friends the slight muscle definition he had developed since he started using the gym at the Playboy mansion.

Donna snorted and Eric let out a little laugh. “I think you may be second in line there, buddy,” Eric said, eyes on Hyde as he spoke.

Hyde pulled his legs down from the table, trying to keep the self-satisfied smirk off his face. He knew that the contest between Kelso and himself for Jackie’s affection was long done and over with. But it still felt good to know that she came to _him_ with her problems and not Michael. There would probably always be an unspoken rivalry between them though and he hoped that he would continue to come out on top.

“What’s that mean?” Michael demanded, brushing his shaggy mullet out of his face. “I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been working out.” He flashed his bicep again and Donna rolled her eyes. “Just look at these babies?” He flexed both arms simultaneously for all to see. “What chick _wouldn’t_ want this sexy hunk of manhood to keep her safe?”

“Yes, yes, Kelso,” Fez piped up, speaking around the white stick that came with his Fun Dip, “you are a stud muffin who can get all the ladies.” Fez sounded like he was pretty tired of hearing about Kelso’s new musculature. He pulled the stick out of his mouth and dunked it back into the grape flavoring. “Do you really think he left? If the son-of-a-beech is really as obsessed with Jackie as you say, then maybe he never left Point Place, yes?”

Donna sat back her eyes wide. She glanced nervously at Eric and felt a chill roll down her spine. “Oh, man,” she breathed, “I didn’t even consider that. I mean, I just kind of assumed that after Red told him to get gone, he’d get gone.” She tried to imagine what would happen if Nick randomly showed up again, trying to take Jackie back with him by force if necessary. She shuddered. Turning to Hyde, Donna said, “We’ve got to warn, Jackie.”

“No, we don’t need to do that,” Hyde said firmly. He stared at Donna intently. “There’s no need to scare her, Donna. She’s been through enough tonight, don’t you think?” It wasn’t that he didn’t want to warn Jackie. But he thought that scaring her with a possibility was jumping the gun. Jackie already had enough on her plate to worry about; adding maybes and what ifs to the equation would only make things worse.

“I don’t know, Hyde,” Eric said slowly, “it seems like a bad idea to keep something this important to ourselves.”

Hyde sighed heavily. “I don’t want to keep it from her _indefinitely_ ,” Hyde snapped. “I just don’t think we should jump to conclusions and scare her right this second. She’s been through enough today. Let’s at least wait a day before we start another crisis.”

Eric nodded thoughtfully. He turned to his girlfriend. “I can see the man’s point, Donna.”

She shot Eric a dirty look before turning back to Hyde. “Hyde, we need to prepare Jackie just in case though,” Donna said forcefully.

“Prepare Jackie for what?” Jackie asked as she entered the basement.

She had run upstairs to change just as Kelso and Fez had arrived. Towards the end of dinner, she had managed to spill steak sauce down the front of her Led Zeppelin T-shirt. On the verge of tears and fearing that she had stained the shirt permanently, Hyde had rushed to her rescue with a clean Black Sabbath tee while Mrs. Forman started the pre-treatment process.

“Jackie!” Michael yelled and snagged her into his arms before anyone could answer her. He bounced up and down with her a few times before putting her down. “Look, Jackie, I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier to kick that dill-hole’s ass for you. But I’ll have you know that I’ve been working out and I’m ready to take down anyone you need me to.”

Jackie offered Kelso a faint smile. “Thank you for the offer, Michael.”

Shoving Kelso out of the way, Fez came over and gave Jackie a chaste hug. “My sweet goddess, I had despaired of ever seeing you again. And now you have returned more beautiful than ever.” Fez was trying to hide how surprised he was by the feel of Jackie’s ribs beneath his arms. He pulled away from her and grinned.

She smiled back. “Thanks, Fez,” Jackie said. Fez rushed back to his chair and put his feet up on the table. Kelso slithered onto the couch beside Eric, leaving no room for Jackie. Without thinking about it, she walked over to Hyde’s chair and settled herself down in his lap. As if the last few years hadn’t happened, Hyde placed a protective hand on her hip as she turned to face Kelso.

“So, Michael,” Jackie said, “tell me what’s been going on! I know you’re living in Chicago and you’re still at the Playboy Mansion?”

“Hyde, you son-of-a-beech, how do you have all the luck with my beautiful goddess?” Fez muttered under his breath when he saw Hyde’s hand on her hip. Hyde flashed Fez a shit-eating grin, impressed with his own good luck.

“Yeah, I’m in Chicago still,” Michael said, leaning back against the couch and elbowing Eric in the side for good measure. “Brooke and I are totally living together, which is great because I can see Betsy whenever I want now.” He made sure to flex his arm muscles again. “And I’ve been working out at the gym because I realized that I need to add to the sweet package that I already am. As I’m sure you noticed.”

Jackie bit her lip, trying not to laugh. “Oh, I definitely noticed,” Jackie assured him. “So, Betsy’s almost four now, right?”

“Yes,” Michael yelled. He maneuvered around the couch a little, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. He managed to knock Eric in the chest with his head and elbow him in the ribs again as he pulled the overstuffed piece of leather from his pocket.

“Damn it, Kelso,” Eric yelled. “Could you at least pretend that there are other people in this room?”

“Why?” Kelso demanded. “The only one who is as pretty as me is Jackie and I am obviously _talking_ to her.” Eric looked like he was going to choke Kelso, but Donna shushed him before he could offer a rejoinder. “Anyway, Jackie,” Kelso said, opening up his wallet and upending the contents into his lap. “You have like three years to make up in presents to Betsy,” he pointed out. “That’s like a lot of presents.”

He handed over a thick sheaf of pictures of Betsy to Jackie. She began going through them, cooing at the appropriate bits. Even though she had looked through a stash of pictures with Mrs. Forman, Jackie hadn’t been paying close attention. She hadn’t wanted to get sucked into the life here then.

She leaned back in Hyde’s lap, pointing out Betsy covered in apple sauce, Betsy buried in a pile of blocks with her proud papa beside her, and Betsy with a huge pink-and-white stuffed unicorn. The unicorn looked so much like Fluffycakes that Jackie had to look at the picture for a few moments before moving on.

Hyde had, of course, already seen the picture parade time and time again. He wasn’t any better as far as being a godparent was concerned, but he had at least been able to shower Betsy in toys after he had gotten sober. The idea of trying to develop a relationship with his goddaughter had left him feeling some type of way that he couldn’t name. It almost felt _wrong_ to try without Jackie, as the girl’s godmother, in the picture.

“I’m sorry I’ve missed out on so much,” Jackie admitted as she handed the pictures back to Michael. “She looks like a really happy baby.”

“Oh, she is,” Michael assured Jackie. “And she would be even happier if her aunt Jackie would bury her in three years’ worth of presents.”

Jackie gave him a small smile. She felt badly for having missed out so much on her goddaughter’s life. “I’ll see what I can do,” Jackie said. She turned slightly in Hyde’s lap and looked at Fez. He was demolishing the grape flavored Fun Dip with a sort of simple minded joy that made the small smile on her face widen. “Fez, Donna said that you have your own salon now and that you work for the Playboy Bunnies?”

Fez stopped shoving the sugar into his face long enough to say, “Oh, I am their favorite stylist, Jackie,” he crowed. “They come to me and ask me to massage their hair and to give them a one-in-a-million haircut. And they invite me to their pool parties and gush to all their friends about how fantastic I am with my hands.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I have found that my needs are very well met.”

Jackie laughed. “Well it seems like you have really lucked out!” Fez nodded happily before diving back in to his candy. “So, what are you guys trying to prepare me for?”

Hyde scowled at Donna who glared back at him. “Well, Fez brought up a really good point,” Donna explained. “He thought that maybe we should consider the possibility that Nick is still in town, still in Wisconsin.”

“Oh, well I figured,” Jackie said with a little shrug.

“What?” Hyde asked, startled. He hadn’t expected her to be so blasé about it.

She turned back to face him. “Well, I mean, Nick isn’t one to give up anything that he thinks is his without a fight. So, he’s probably staying somewhere while he thinks up a new way to get me back.” She looked back at Donna. “So, I appreciate the head’s up but I already considered that.”

Donna shot Hyde a smug look. Hyde, of course, felt like an idiot for not considering it himself. He had gotten the same impression when he had met Nick: he wasn’t a man often denied and if he was denied, he wouldn’t let go until he had no other option.

“I’m surprised you guys didn’t already think about it, though,” she continued thoughtfully. “Mr. Forman did. He told me that if Nick tries to contact me that I should let him know immediately. He didn’t mean just through a phone call, either.” The expression on Jackie’s face was sadly thoughtful. “I mean, I don’t think he’s going to just appear on the street and try to toss me into a car, but he’s going to try something.”

Hyde wrapped his arms around her waist and gave her a fierce hug. The idea that Nick would try anything after being told to take a leap made his blood boil, but the image she had placed in his head frightened him. How was he supposed to let her get back on her feet if he was so worried that Nick would try to kidnap her off the street that he couldn’t leave her alone for five minutes?

“Well, then it really is a good thing that I’m here,” Michael said firmly. He stood up and hooked his fingers into his pants, hiking them up just a little. “I mean, I have police training _and_ I’m a really excellent bouncer, Jackie. I can just sleep here tonight to make sure that you’re safe.”

Hyde rolled his eyes at Michael’s boast. He was pretty sure the reason Michael still had a job was because he was simple minded and girls liked to look at him. Jackie smiled up at Michael, patting Hyde’s arm thoughtfully. “Oh, I really appreciate that, Michael, but I bet your mom would really like to see you tonight.”

“Well…”

“And besides, the whole Forman household is here to keep me safe,” Jackie pointed out, “and Steven’s here, too.”

Michael eyed her for a moment before nodding slowly and sitting back down on the couch. He managed to get Eric in the thigh this time with his bony elbow as he situated himself. Without warning, Eric let out a manly bellow, grabbed Kelso around the middle, and slammed them both over the back of the couch. The two of them went over in a graceless heap. Michael let out a large, “oof,” as Eric landed on him.

With the majority of the battle blocked by the couch, all Jackie could really do was start counting quietly to herself. On the count of five, she heard, “Ow; my eye!” Eric stood up, hands held high like a prize fighter who had won an important fight. Fez and Donna clapped as he came around the couch strutting.

“It’s good to be home,” Jackie murmured quietly. Behind her, Hyde laughed.


	17. need someone to hold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven remembers some of Jackie's insecurities as Jackie reveals herself to him in a way she hasn't done since they were teenagers.

Hyde tried to pay attention to what was happening in the movie he was watching, but every few minutes he found himself catching a glimpse of Jackie hiding a lady-like yawn behind her carefully manicured hand. She had been attempting to read though an article about Richard Gere for the last 10 minutes, but seemed unable to focus on what it was she was trying to read.

He felt like he was being constantly drawn to her. He had started off watching the late night creature feature in his usual chair after she had moved to the couch, sitting cross-legged on the far cushion. After getting up to get them both Popsicles, he had found himself sitting back down beside her instead. She had moved closer to him, leaning into him as she flipped through the magazine.

He couldn’t understand how they had managed to fall into this old, comfortable pattern. Hadn’t they started off their relationship this way? They had been drawn to each other, like two magnets pulled apart and slamming into one another. Whenever they had been in the same room, they had invariably wound up together, touching surreptitiously so as to keep up the contact.

It was almost like the years that she had been away, the year when they had been broken up had been erased. They were back to the way things were before the ultimatum in a way and it was both nerve-wracking and reassuring. On the one hand, it meant that the differences between them weren’t fundamental holes in their relationship. On the other hand, he didn’t know where any of this was leading.

“Doll, why don’t you head on up to bed?” Hyde asked as Jackie hid another yawn behind her hand.

“I’m not tired,” she said immediately without looking up from her magazine.

“You’ve been hiding yawns for the last ten minutes, Jackie. You’re exhausted,” he pointed out.

She closed the magazine, holding her place with her index finger. She turned a little to face Hyde. “I’m really just not tired yet, Steven. I’ll go upstairs, though, if you want me to. I don’t want to keep you up.”

Hyde rolled his eyes at her, turning to face her too. “Jackie, you’ve had a really long day and it’s been very stressful. And while I would like to hope that tomorrow will be better, there’s no telling how long and stressful of a day it’s going to wind up being. So, go on up to bed and try to get some sleep.”

Jackie bit her lip in response, nibbling on the flesh distractedly. “Well, I mean, I just don’t think I’ll be able to get any sleep,” she said finally with a little shrug. She looked up at Hyde with her big doe eyes. “I’ll be too worried about what the doctor has to say tomorrow and about everything else, so why bother trying?”

Hyde sighed. “Jackie, you can’t just decide to forego an attempt to sleep because you _think_ you may not be able to fall asleep.”

“Well, why not?” She demanded. Hyde just looked at her, giving her that one look that pointed out without his having to say it just how ridiculous she was being. She pouted at him and muttered, “Fine, okay. People _need_ to sleep, I get that.”

She continued to pout for a moment before her face brightened and she looked up at him. “But what if instead of going to bed we stay up all night and get to know each other again? I mean, you’ve gotten the highlights about my life in California. Isn’t it only fair to return the favor? Tell me what’s been going on with you, Steven.”

Hyde reached out and pulled both of her hands into his. “Jackie, I have no problem giving you the highlights about my life _after_ you’ve gotten a good night sleep. Mrs. Forman said that getting to the hospital early would be the fastest way to get you in and out. So, I figured we’d try to get there for a little after 8. So you need to get some sleep.”

She pouted at him again. He frowned at her, trying to figure out what her damage was about going to sleep. “What’s with you? Why are you fighting me on this?”

“The _real_ question is why you’re asking me to go to bed,” she rejoined. Hyde snorted at her and her cheeks flushed. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she muttered.

“Look, Jackie, I’ve explained that you need to get your rest before tomorrow,” he reminded her.

“Right,” she agreed. She pulled her hands from his and pushed her dark curly hair back from her face.

“So why are you fighting this?”

She sighed heavily. “Well, it’s stupid,” she muttered, turning until her body was facing the television again. Nervously, she began drawing little designs on the arm of the couch. “It’s just that for the last three years, I haven’t really slept by myself.” Her little cheeks turned a deeper shade of pink at the admission. “Whenever I would go to bed by myself, I didn’t sleep well.

“I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m just not built to sleep by myself, but when I do, I have stupid dreams. And then I can’t fall back to sleep after so, it’s almost like what is the point?” She glanced at him shyly. “It’s stupid, right?”

“No, Jackie, it’s not stupid,” he assured her. A memory hit him hard in the chest. He found his chest tight with repressed emotion.

She shrugged, feeling a little better at the admission. “So I guess what I’m really trying to say is… well, Hyde, will you sleep with me?” She thought about what she had just said and then belatedly tacked on, “Platonically?”

Hyde bit down on the inside of his cheek, trying to keep himself from laughing. “Yes, Jackie. I will sleep beside you platonically.” He stood up and held his hand out to her. She slipped her dainty hand into his and he lifted her to her feet. “Do you want to sleep upstairs or do you just want to stay down here?”

“Well, I mean I really appreciate the Formans letting me sleep in Laurie’s old room but the bed is really uncomfortable.”

“Oh, you too, huh?” He asked.

“Yeah, I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to think that the reason she was such a mean-spirited bitch is because she didn’t have a quality mattress to sleep on.”

Hyde laughed. “All right. Why don’t you go into my room and get comfortable? I’ll be right in.” She leaned up on her toes and kissed his cheek before bouncing into his room. Hyde watched her go, trying to control the wild burst of emotion roiling through him.

Jackie had always had problems sleeping by herself. She could do it, but she preferred not to. She had told him once that she liked to hear someone else breathing behind her in the middle of the night, a reminder that she wasn’t actually as alone as she felt. He should have guessed what was wrong, but it had taken her admission about not sleeping well by herself for nearly three years before it had clicked.

He felt awful that he hadn’t remembered.

Hyde shut down everything and then went into his room. Jackie was already lying in bed. She had helped herself to his lighter and lit one of the vanilla candles on his bedside table. She had another magazine in her hands and was perusing the articles thoughtfully while she waited. “I’m glad you bought yourself scented candles,” she remarked as she turned the page. “I’ve always found that a vanilla and lavender scent is a good one to relax to.”

Hyde went over to his dresser and pulled out a pair of sweat pants that he had cut off at the knees. Feeling inordinately self-conscious, he changed out of his clothes into the sleep pants. Jackie kept her eyes focused on the magazine in her hands, trying to give him the privacy her presence was robbing him of.

“Jackie, you should never fall asleep with a lit candle beside you,” Hyde remarked as he walked over to his bed.

“Well, I’m not saying that I fall asleep with one lit all the time but it’s been known to happen. Besides, it’s really nice to fall asleep to a pleasant scent. I think certain scents help keep your dreams pleasant.” She closed the magazine and tossed it onto the floor as he knelt on the bed. He reached up and shut off the overhead light before climbing under the covers beside Jackie. “Thank you, Steven,” she said as the candle flame guttered before strengthening.

“And I don’t just mean about letting me sleep down here with you or about being so nice to me or about helping me. Just… thank you,” she said quietly. “I know I said it before, but I don’t think I can explain how grateful I am.” She rolled to face him, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight. He thought his heart would burst at how beautiful she looked with the candle lit. “Thank you for being the man I need you to be.”

Hyde kissed her gently on the forehead. “Thank you for letting me be.”


	18. lodi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackie goes to the doctor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: abortion mention, rape mention, abuse mention.

After the doctor shut the door on his way out of the exam room, Jackie listened to his muffled conversation before she hunched in on herself. She was sitting at the edge of the exam table, her back bare to the world in her cotton gown. In her hand, she held a crumpled piece of paper, squeezing it spasmodically. It was like a talisman of sorts, this new prescription of hers. She peered down at the paper, flattening it against her thigh, and was proud to see her name scrawled in spidery doctor script. She crushed the paper again and was shocked to feel the heat of tears on her cheeks.

She hunched over further and felt like her lungs had been robbed of breath. She fought with herself, trying to bring her body back under her own control but it refused to listen. Tears continued to leak from her eyes and no matter how much she tried to staunch the flow, they kept coming. She wondered if she was at the point where the tight leash she had held over her emotions had finally broken.

She had revealed more to the nice doctor with the friendly face than she had initially intended. She knew that keeping information from doctors never worked out well for the patient willing to keep their lips closed. But the idea of sharing the intimidate details of her life from the last few years had been unconscionable.

It was almost as if she could keep everything under wraps and pretend like it hadn’t happened. She had the bruises and the nervous tics as reminders that the last three years _had_ happened of course. But if she didn’t share too many details, if she kept pieces trapped inside, then she could pretend that not _all_ of it was real.

However as the doctor had begun asking her questions about the frequency of her injuries and how often Nick had raised his voice to her, she had begun to loosen up. Before she knew it, she was spilling the intimate details of her married life to the stranger in the white lab coat. When the doctor had asked her if it was possible she could be pregnant, she had started to break down.

She remembered the day when Nick had come home early to find her in their bathroom, taking one of the pills from her birth control pack. Two years into their marriage, he had come home early with what had appeared to be a bushel of red roses and surprised her as she sipped a glass of water, taking the pill designated for that day.

Jackie’s diligence regarding her birth control was a source of pride. Since the day her period had come when she had been late after sleeping with Michael, she had kept careful track of when she took her pill and made sure not to miss a single one. Even though the out of pocket costs had been high when she had worked as a waitress, she had still scraped the money together to maintain her control over her sex life.

Nick had known that she was on the pill. When they had been dating, he had even seemed to like the fact that she was a woman who knew that a child at this stage in her life was just not an option. But for some reason, the idea that she would continue to take her daily dose of birth control after they were wed had sent him into a blind rage.

They had never discussed the possibility of having children before then. She had assumed incorrectly that they would sit down and come to a joint decision. But that was always the problem: She thought about how things _should_ proceed in their relationship from a logical point of view and she wound up getting blind-sided by just how irrational he truly was.

He had hurled obscenities at her. He had screamed so loudly that his entire face had turned red and splotchy. When he screamed at her, spittle came flying from his lips. He had called her all manner of terrible names and screamed about how he thought she was _defective._ The insult had brought tears to her eyes, which only seemed to set him off more. He had told her that he was considering finding himself a brood mare – _a brood fucking mare_ – to have his children that Jackie would, of course, then raise.

She had been sick at the thought that he had considered having sex with another woman just to impregnate her, never mind the idea that she, herself, would be forced to raise his illegitimate child or children. It was straight out of a horror-romance novel by V.C. Andrews. He had hurled more insults at her, punched her in the stomach so that she would throw up her pill, and then threw the rest of the pack out.

While she watched, he went into their room and started throwing things. Trying to calm him down, she hurried after him with an apology on her lips, oddly feeling like this was the moment when he finally lost it entirely and did something that wouldn’t heal. Instead, he had turned on her and forced himself on her calling her dirty names all the while.

It had taken months before the effects of years’ worth of hormonal birth control wore down in her body, but eventually, she had realized that she was late again. The tingles of terror from her skull down her back and into her stomach had almost made her sick. The positive result on the daisy packaged pregnancy test and the resulting call with a registered nurse to discuss those results had left her nauseous for hours.

After reading the test results and making an appointment at a local clinic in the city, Jackie had considered her options carefully. Donna had mentioned the “big A” when she had been in high school. Abortion was always an available option for every sexually active girl, but Jackie had bigger concerns than a boyfriend not marrying her to “do the right thing” now that she was truly pregnant.

Her one driving concern was the thought that Nick could break her neck in a fit of rage, leaving her child in his care. The idea, before then, that Nick could be capable of killing her had never really materialized in her mind before she had made the appointment with the clinic. But as she lay on the floor of the bathroom, she had realized that the life she was living was not a life _anyone_ should live and doubly so for any child brought in the mix.

The day of her abortion, Jackie had pulled out the long hidden Led Zeppelin T-shirt and a pair of old jeans. She had kept the shirt with her as a source of inner strength, of empowerment over the years. She had decided to wear it along with a pair of thick sunglasses to keep her face hidden from the people who could be taking pictures of the patients going into the clinic. Maybe the shirt protected her or she was just lucky, but the violence heard about on the news didn’t play out in the clinic she had chosen.

Jackie wasn’t sure, but she thought the abortion had brought her to where she was today. It was after the abortion when she had realized that she needed to get out. Once she had gotten the note from Kitty, letting her know that her father had passed away, she had realized it was time to do something.

She had planned on saying good-bye to her father’s grave and head …somewhere… with a sort of unintentional goal of fleeing her husband’s tyranny. The plan had never formed beyond, _get to Point Place, say good-bye._ Why she had thought that a final farewell to her absentee father was a good jumping off point for running away from her abusive husband had never been clear, but it had been a pathological need since she had received the obituary in the mail.

She had been able to assure herself that she wasn’t doing anything definitive because she had no plan. She could have changed her mind at any moment. She could have changed her mind before she got on the plane to Point Place. In either case, the decision had been made. The Led Zeppelin T-shirt came with her as a sort of added protection. If she could keep it with her, she would be able to realize her goal.

The unintended plan of running off though had been taken out of the equation. Steven and the Formans had taken the decision out of her hands. Now she was here, crying to a doctor about how her life had been lived at the manipulations of a man who deemed what was and was not in her best interest. Having his child had never been in her best interest; all Nick cared about was the added prestige in being able to have a child.

The doctor had listened to her tale of woe with those sympathetic eyes and then reached into his pocket to pull out his prescription pad. He had scribbled on it and asked her when she had last had sex with her husband. Jackie couldn’t remember – she just knew it had been the same week when Nick had punched her pelvic girdle hard enough to have caused a miscarriage if she had still been pregnant. Her period had shown up shortly thereafter and Nick had been on business trips since, ensuring that Jackie didn’t have to put up with his forced attentions.

The doctor had handed her the prescription for birth control before letting her know that she could get dressed. He had assured her that the bruises would heal but that if the one on her back didn’t start to fade in a week, then she should take it up with her personal care physician. He had also let her know that she was terribly malnourished because of her dieting, but he was putting his trust in Mrs. Forman’s delicious cooking to get her back up to fighting weight.

Jackie had stared at him open mouthed, unable to fully comprehend that she was, all in all, fine. The very idea that she could be fine was beyond her. She knew she wasn’t. Her insides felt like hazardous waste and the uphill battle she was going to have to go through was enough to make her want to hide from the world. As the door closed behind the nice faced doctor, she had tried to figure out how to fix herself.

As she tried to figure that out, her eyes went down to the prescription in her hand.

As with Steven’s T-shirt, she felt like it was another form of magical protection. It was another step away from the door mat she had become when she had married Nick. She was becoming her own person again with her own ideas and her own opinions and her own desires. The pill would help all that in some magical way that she couldn’t quite explain even to herself.

Sniffling, Jackie climbed off the table and began the process of getting dressed. She shoved the prescription into her pocket and then fingered the wrinkled paper. After she had pulled on another one of Steven’s T-shirts – Blue Oyster Cult – she opened the door to let Donna and Steven into the room.

Like a comedic reproduction of the _3 Stooges_ , they both made for the door simultaneously and got stuck. Jackie laughed as she began pulling her socks and shoes on. Donna popped through first and then stopped when she saw just how pale and wan Jackie was. Laugh or no laugh, the girl looked like she had been through the ringer.

Steven thought Jackie had the look of someone who was being haunted by the ghost of her past. He figured that probably wasn’t so far off the mark considering why they had come to see a doctor in the first place. Her face was pale and it was obvious she had been crying. As she stood up from tying her shoes, her hand slipped into her pocket and she bit her lip nervously. He couldn’t tell if the examination had been in her best interest or not.

“So… are you falling apart?” Donna asked nervously. She didn’t know what to say or how to help her friend. She had hoped that wearing plaid and being a lumberjack would get her to crack a smile, but Jackie had been quiet on the ride to the hospital, on the wait for the doctor, and now looked like she had cried herself to empty.

Jackie looked thoughtfully down at the hand in her pocket before answering. “Maybe,” she said slowly, “but I think I’m on the mend.”

“So the doctor says that you’re good to go then?” Steven asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Jackie agreed. “He says that even though I’m pretty underweight, he’s pretty sure that Mrs. Forman will fix that in no time.” She smiled. “I think she will, too.”

Hyde slapped his hands together and grinned at her. “Well, while we were waiting, Donna and I were throwing around the idea of stopping at the Hub before we go home. What do you think?”

Jackie pulled the prescription from her pocket and studied it thoughtfully. “Yeah, you know that sounds like a really good idea.” She slipped the paper back into her pocket, afraid to let it go lest it pop like a balloon. “I have to drop this prescription off anyway,” she explained, “and I would like to wait around until it’s ready.”

“Sure,” Donna said enthusiastically. Hyde wrapped an arm around Jackie’s shoulder as Donna led the way through the door. Jackie pulled him closer, enveloping his waist with her own arm. She leaned her head into his pectoral.

Jackie thought about what, if anything, she should tell her friends about what her life was like before coming back to Point Place. They would have time to kill at the Hub, waiting for her prescription to be filled. She couldn’t keep putting off telling her friends what things had been like, what she had suffered through.

While she had walked into the hospital, considering the idea of lying to the doctor about what her life had been like, she knew that was unrealistic. She also recognized that her reasoning – a childish desire to keep it hidden in an effort to pretend as though it hadn’t happened – was no real reason at all. The only person she was hurting by keeping everything bottled up was herself.

In fact, Jackie was pretty sure that bottling things up had been one of the main reasons her mother had become the alcoholic that she was. The fear of becoming like her mother still burned brightly in Jackie and she would even fight back against her own childish impulses so long as she knew that she would, at the end of the day, be a better-rounded adult than her own mother.

Jackie knew that she needed to get it all out and talk with the people who knew her better than she knew herself in some instances. She may have changed since she moved to California but at the heart of it all, she was still Jackie Beulah Burkhart.


	19. don't look now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red gets a surprise visit.

Red Forman surveyed his yard thoughtfully, knowing that he had spent the morning doing a job well done. He had decided to take the day off from the muffler shop, calling Roger to let him know that morning. Roger, who was in his late 20s and eager to please, had been happy to fill in for Red while he was out for the day. Red didn’t usually take time off unless Kitty demanded it, so he was sure Roger was enjoying being the big boss for the day.

Red had made the split second decision that morning to not go in. He had fully intended on going in early to get a head start on the paperwork that seemed to pile up whenever he wasn’t looking. But as he had sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the newspaper spread open before him, his thoughts had turned to that smarmy sneer on Nick’s face as he had left their driveway.

It wasn’t a feeling of doom, per se, but more a feeling like the other shoe was getting ready to drop. Or maybe it wasn’t really the other shoe, but just the first in a long line of combat boots ready to take aim at Jackie. He had picked up the phone and called Roger with his apologies, before feeling like he was as prepared as he was going to be for the chaos that could come at any moment.

He had seen the kids off that morning to go to the hospital and puttered around the kitchen for a while, trying to find something to bide his time with. He would have preferred to have had the dumbass pull something early, get it out of the way so that he could formulate a good game plan against whatever low this Nick person sank to, but after an hour of radio silence from all fronts, he had found himself unable to sit still.

He had glanced outside and found just the ticket to get him through the dull morning. The yard had been in chaos with leaves everywhere, the driveway filthy, and required Red’s careful attention. It required the careful attention that Eric couldn’t or wouldn’t give his chores. It wasn’t that the kid didn’t have it in him, Red was sure. When Eric took the time, his yard work rivaled Red’s own.

But Red had been watching quietly from the sidelines while Eric worked his part-time jobs at both Grooves and the hotel while going to school full-time. It looked like Eric was finally taking his relationship with Donna seriously. Eric appeared to be blossoming into a man that Red could be proud to call his son. Of course, even on pain of death, Red would never reveal such a sentimental thing.

Now that the chaos of his yard and driveway had been tended to, Red wondered when the next round would hit. He was sure that he hadn’t mistaken the type of man Nick was. He had looked like a man who, as Jackie had said, wasn’t willing to take “no” for an answer. If Red had to be honest with himself, he had to admit that he was looking forward to the fight ahead. Things had been boring since most of the kids had moved away.

After Jackie had run off to California and those two kettle heads had firmly settled in Chicago, things had been very quiet. Steven had moved out shortly thereafter and the milieu had quieted down. The most chaotic thing for the first few months had been helping Donna move into her own apartment in Madison, waiting for Eric to come back from Africa, and Kitty’s worrisome reports each week regarding what Steven’s alcohol intake looked like.

For the last year, his life had been mostly quiet and dull. He hadn’t realized it but he had lived for the chaotic environment of the late 70s when the kids had overtaken his house with their squabbles and pranks. He had always thought that he would revel in the quiet when they were all gone, but had been horrified to discover that he hated it.

Red was a take-charge kind of guy and with the kids gone, there hadn’t been much for him to take charge of. When Eric had come to him, voicing his very real concerns that Steven was on his way to following both Bud and Edna’s lives into the bottle, Red had done what he did best: stepped in and took charge of the situation.

Now he had something new to step in and take charge of.

Besides Steven, Jackie was one of his favorites of all of Eric’s friends. Not only could the girl hold a flashlight and change a tire quicker than even he could, but she made him think of what Laurie could have been like. He had always kind of seen her as a fill-in for his selfish daughter; a _better_ selfish daughter.

The knowledge that some bastard had been hurting her for the last few years was almost enough to make him want to break someone in half. Not only did he want to shove his foot up that dumbass’s ass, but he wanted to punch the smarmy jerk in the face, tell him never to let him darken his door step again, and move on with his life.

He had been expecting a fight in the yard, maybe. He had thought that the phone would ring and he would hear heavy, obscene breathing on the other end. Whatever the case had been, he had been expecting _something_. But with the day half over and nothing to show for it, Red was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t taken the wrong measure of Jackie’s future ex-husband.

If that was the worst that had come of this whole situation, then he would be glad for it even if he did, secretly, want a fight. They would have enough problems in the months to come while Jackie got settled back into life in Point Place, trying to find her way amid the charred embers of her past.

Red sighed heavily as he watched an unmarked police cruiser turning onto the street. He had a sixth sense about these things: he knew the police officer was coming to see him. He took the bag of leaves and the rake back into the garage. Sure enough, when he turned around, the cruiser had parked in front of his home.

Eddie Bauer climbed out of the driver’s side door, looking around the neighborhood before zeroing in on Red. Eddie sent a wave in Red’s direction. Red waved back before going to meet him halfway down the driveway. A moment of _déjà vu_ hit him as they met in almost the exact same spot as he had met up with Jackie’s future ex dumbass the day before.

“Hello, Eddie,” Red said, holding his hand out. Eddie shook it good-naturedly. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, Red, I haven’t been down to the VFW in a while,” Eddie admitted. “I’ve been spending more time with the kids since Linda and I decided to move to Florida when I retire. Linda’s on this idea that we’ll never see them again.” Eddie shot Red a “we’re just two husbands here” kind of smile.

“Oh, I understand, Eddie,” Red said, slipping his hands into his pants pockets. “Kitty was sure that we were going to miss out on every detail of the kids’ lives if we went down there when Bob did.”

Sighing, Eddie put on his official face. “Well, Red, I’d like to catch up, but I’m here on official business.”

“I kind of figured,” Red admitted. “Why don’t you come inside and have a nice cup of coffee with me while we talk about it? Kitty made cinnamon buns this morning before she went down to the hospital.”

Eddie’s face lit up. “You know I can’t pass up one of Kitty’s cinnamon buns.”

With that, Red led him back into the house. He made sure that Eddie was well taken care of in both the baked good and warm coffee department before sitting down across from his long-time acquaintance from the VFW. After he had sipped at the fresh coffee for a few moments, Eddie put his official face back on.

“We got a crazy report down the station this morning, Red,” Eddie explained after devouring a few bites of his cinnamon bun. “They took the report about 11 and when I saw it, I just couldn’t believe it.”

“Tell me,” Red demanded.

Eddie sighed heavily. “Some guy came down to the station to report that you and Kitty, of all people, had _kidnapped_ his wife.” Eddie shook his head like he couldn’t believe the things people would say. “I mean, can you believe that, Red? You and Kitty kidnapped a young lady?”

Red shook his head. Of all the lame-brained schemes that Nick could have come up with, Red hadn’t figured he would go to the police so quickly. Didn’t men who beat their wives want to keep cops out of the equation? “I have to ask you, Eddie, but did the man leave his name by any chance?”

Eddie fumbled around in his breast pocket and pulled out a small notepad. He pulled out a pair of old man’s glasses, looking embarrassed that he needed them to read his notes. “His name was Nick Dufort,” Eddie said finally.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you were going to say,” Red said with a heavy sigh. “Look, Eddie, I’ll be straight with you. That man is hopped up or something. Jackie and he are in the middle of getting a divorce and he just can’t handle the fact that she left him. She’s staying with Kitty and me while she sorts things out.”

“Oh,” Eddie said, looking much more cheerful at the news. “Well, then I’ll be sure to let everyone know that this is a false police report.” He dug into his cinnamon bun with gusto. After he swallowed: “Jackie?” Eddie asked, pulling a pen out of his pocket to take down notes.

“Jackie Burkhart,” Red clarified.

Eddie stopped writing and looked at Red with a surprised look on his face. “I thought she moved off a while ago,” Eddie said. He sat back in his chair thoughtful.

“That’s right,” Red agreed. “She came back here when she realized that she needed to separate from her husband.”

“You’re a good man, Red,” Eddie said firmly, “letting Ms. Burkhart stay with you and Kitty while she gets back on her feet.” Eddie wrote down a few more notes in his notebook before glancing up at his old friend with that official policeman’s face back in place. “Jackie wouldn’t be here by chance to confirm your story, would she? I don’t mean to be offensive here, Red, but I need to go back to the station with more than what you told me.”

“Well, Jackie went to the hospital this morning. She said something about running some errands with some of the kids and then she’d be home.” Red paused. “I could have her call in or stop by just to confirm that we’re not holding her prisoner.”

“I’m really sorry to have to do that to you, Red,” Eddie said glumly, “but the chief will have my ass if we don’t hear all this from her directly.”

“No, no, I completely understand,” he said. “You just have to make sure that everything checks out.”

“Of course. I’m glad you understand,” Eddie admitted.

Before Red could work on setting a time for Jackie to go down to the police station, the woman in question walked through the sliding glass door. Behind her, Steven and Donna looked wearily at the police officer taking up space at the kitchen table. “Hey, Jackie,” Red said firmly. “This nice police officer wanted to have a little chat with you.”

She swallowed nervously and looked at the older man with the kind eyes. “Okay,” Jackie said, frowning and glancing at Red. He seemed pleased though and she had to admit that that made her relax just a little. Jackie trusted his judgement.

Red stood up from the kitchen table and beckoned for Jackie to sit down. He waved Donna and Steven away from them. Steven and Donna settled down on the bar stools in front of the counter top, turning slightly so that they could watch the proceedings while Red stood behind Jackie, arms folded across his chest.

Jackie sat down in Red’s vacated chair and looked at the officer with her wide, doe eyes. “What can I do for you?” She asked softly.

“Well, Jackie,” Eddie said, his voice paternal in every way. “We received a report that the Formans had kidnapped you.”

Jackie’s nervous look turned to shock and then finally dismay. She was speechless for a moment, her mind trying to wrap around what the officer had just told her. “I can’t believe someone would lie to you like that,” she said in her shock. She shook her head and said, “Let me guess, the guy who made this report is named Nick Dufort, right?”

“That’s correct,” Eddie murmured.

“Right,” she said her shock and dismay turning to disgust. “No, I was not kidnapped by anyone especially not Mr. and Mrs. Forman. They have been kind enough to let me stay here while I get back on my feet. I’m getting a divorce from Nick and he’s not happy about it.”

“So, I see,” Eddie said, writing all of this down in his little notebook. He shut the notebook and placed it in his breast pocket, pushing his reading glasses into the opposite pocket. Eddie stood up and looked down at Jackie, his face glum. “I’m really sorry to have bothered you two with this. I figured this was a false report, but I just needed to be sure.”

“We completely understand,” Red assured his friend.

Jackie nodded stiffly. “I completely understand,” she echoed.

“I’ll be sure to let the chief know that this man has filed a false report. We’ll fine him for the waste of our time at least,” Eddie assure them. “Well, I’ll be getting out of your hair at the moment. We may need you to come down and swear that this report is false, but I’ll call to let you know if we need you to.” He nodded to Jackie and then to Red. “You folks try to have a good afternoon.”

“Of course, Eddie,” Red replied, walking behind the officer as he let himself out of the sliding glass door. Red watched as his friend walked down the driveway before sitting back down across from Jackie. She looked lost, like a puppy who couldn’t find their owner at the park.

“Kidnapping?” Steven demanded. “That’s the best he could come up with?”

“Well,” Jackie said slowly, “it would be the simplest way to throw down the gauntlet and it’s perfectly legal. The next step is for him to file a missing person report in LA. He knows the commissioner there.” Her face looked a little pale at the thought. “I don’t know if the police commissioner can do anything from across the country, but it’s something he’ll try next.” She swallowed as she looked up at Red nervously.

He patted her shoulder reassuringly. “There’s no need to worry, Jackie. You are perfectly within your right to divorce that dumbass,” he said. “We’ll face everything he throws at us.” There was a steely-eyed determination in his eyes.

As with the T-shirt and the prescription for her new birth control pills, Jackie felt another level of magical protection settle over her. As her eyes pulled from Red’s and lingered on Steven’s, she felt yet another push that seemed to indicate she was moving in the right direction, a sort of layering of talismanic magic to keep her safe from the big bad who was her husband.

She smiled up at Red and pat his hand. “You’re right, Mr. Forman,” Jackie said. She reached over and snaked one of the remaining cinnamon buns from the plate. She bit into it vehemently and with her mouth full, she said, “Not only will we face it, but we’ll win.”


	20. graveyard train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven reflects on what Jackie's been through for the last three years; Jackie reflects on what Steven.

Steven held Jackie in his arms carefully, running his fingers languidly against her back. She had fallen asleep while they sat watching a rerun of _T.J. Hooker_ , snuggling into his side as they sat on the small couch in the basement. Her forehead was pressed into the soft flesh of his neck and he could turn his head just a little to inhale the flowery bouquet of her shampoo. He had stopped paying attention to the television, trying his best to get his roiling emotions under some semblance of order.

While they had waited for Jackie’s prescription to be filled, they had stopped by the pawn shop. Jackie had forked over a diamond encrusted watch, a teardrop pendant made of gold and blue topaz, the largest diamond ring he had ever laid his eyes on, and the matching wedding band with diamonds crusted across the front of the band. Both his and Donna’s eyes had bulged as she plunked the hefty jewelry down in front of the shop owner.

The shop owner’s eyes had done some bulging of their own as she slid her hands up to her ears and removed the diamond and amethyst tear drops in her ears. Once they had haggled over how much he was willing to hand over for the jewelry, Jackie had offered to buy Donna and Steven anything they wanted from the Hub. While there, she had candidly spoken to them about what her life had been like in California.

During the telling, Steven’s emotions had made strategic stops at jealous, irritated, unhappy, angry, and horrified all before stopping with finality at anger. He had clenched his teeth together tightly, just as tight as the fists he was flexing beneath the table at the Hub, as he carefully listened to what Jackie was saying. He had wanted nothing more than to find Nick, wanting to punch the man in the face as well as in the nuts for everything he had ever said and done to Jackie.

Steven couldn’t figure out what pissed him off the most though: the fact that Jackie had lived through this, the fact that he had technically driven her to this life after he had forced her from Point Place with his inability to admit that he wanted her back too, or the fact that she kept trying to make it seem like everything wasn’t nearly as bad as all that. She kept illustrating how badly things _could_ have been by highlighting domestic violence stories she had heard and comparing them to what she, herself, had gone through.

Every single time Jackie had mentioned something that Nick had done to her and how it could have been so much worse made him want to scream. He could tell from the look on Donna’s face that she felt much the same. It was almost like Jackie was trying to paint Nick into a better light, somehow hoping to change the picture they had already formed of him. Didn’t she know that making it seem like things weren’t really “all that bad” was letting Nick win?

By making it seem like things could have been so much worse, she was ignoring her own feelings on the matter. By the number of unshed tears glittering in her eyes as she spoke, she definitely felt pretty strongly about all of it, no matter “how much worse things could have been.”

Steven wasn’t sure how to make it clear to her that she had a right to feel however she felt about it all, no matter how many horror stories others’ had contributed to the domestic violence bulletins. She had been in an abusive relationship and the sooner she realized that, no matter how “light” things had comparatively been, then the sooner she could start to truly heal.

When they had come home to find the unmarked police cruiser in the driveway, Steven’s first thought was that Nick had come back and started something with Red. Of course, the rational part of his mind kept reminding him that if that were true, there would have been more than one cruiser out front with their lights flashing. Still, he had found himself relieved to see Red sitting peacefully with an officer at the kitchen table.

His calm had been shattered when the office her begun asking Jackie if she had been kidnapped. The gall on Nick was amazing and it needed to be taken down a peg or two. He found his fingers aching to form a fist that was aimed at the smarmy sneer on that jackass’s face. The rational part of his brain was in control, however he found himself sitting idly by while Red and Jackie both agreed that they’d make it through.

When Mrs. Forman had come home, she had sat down with Jackie while Steven held her hand against the kitchen table. They had talked about the lawyer’s name she had gotten from her co-worker at the hospital and the appointment that Kitty had made on Jackie’s behalf for the next day. Afterward, Jackie had looked exhausted, ready to pass out at the kitchen table after an emotional roller coaster of a day. She had jumped at the suggestion that she and Steven head down to the basement to watch some television.

He wasn’t surprised at all that she had fallen asleep so quickly.

Now he had to figure out where all of this was heading. The part of him that had wanted to return to the knight in shining armor was glad for all of it. He was getting what he wanted. Jackie was confiding in him again, trusting him with the intimate details of her life with Nick. On top of that, he felt like he could finally fulfill the role properly. The armor didn’t feel like a weight around his neck; it felt _right_.

But there were parts of him that Jackie didn’t know at all. How could he explain to her what the last three years had been like for him? He didn’t want her to pity him or anything, but he felt like she should at least know that things hadn’t been easy for him.

He wanted to explain to her about the drinking and the self-hatred that had overtaken him to a point where death would have been preferable. He wanted to tell her about what it was like to wake up in the morning, hungover and miserable with the reality that he was a piece of shit.

But he didn’t want to tell her simply because she had shared her life with him. He wanted to share those details with her so that she could come to her own decisions about who he was and where they may end up one day.

The dreamer in him hoped that she would look at him, would truly see him for who he was again, and love him anyway. The little orphan who hid behind sunglasses and pushed the people he loved away to stop them from hurting him didn’t want to give her the chance. The screaming “what if” in his head about what Jackie could do to him with all this knowledge kept his lips sewn shut. Maybe he hadn’t really changed at all.

 

 

Jackie yawned delicately and then slowly pushed herself up and out of Steven’s arms. He had fallen asleep at some point while they lay together, mashed into the tiny couch in the basement. He looked peaceful and sweet, his lips slightly parted. She wanted to lean over and kiss him but stopped herself, reminding herself that she was married even if the marriage would be ending soon enough.

That part inside of her that kept reminding herself that she was not her mother spoke louder whenever she was overcome with the need to feel Steven near her, to feel his lips on hers, his hands on her body. He had always been able to ignite her lust, something she hadn’t thought possible before they had gotten together. Her relationship with Michael had taught her what sex was; her relationship with Steven had taught her what _good_ sex was.

The more time she spent with him, the more she wanted to ignore the fact that the last three years had even happened. She wanted to pick up where they had left off before she had stupidly told him she was leaving for Chicago. She wanted to erase the last few years like a newspaper editor, deleting the bad parts and keeping the good.

She knew that things hadn’t been perfect before Chicago had happened, but they had been better than what she had gone through since the Chicago Incident. The more she realized how horrible things had been since Steven had found Michael in a towel on his way to her hotel room, the more she wanted a do-over. She knew it wasn’t possible, but she could always dream.

In her dreams, Steven and she had never broken up. She had never pushed the marriage card on him like she had with Michael. The two of them were a better couple than even Donna and Eric had been before the promise ring incident. The subtle nuances of their relationship only spoke to the strong bond between them. And Jackie could admit that, for all their faults, they had been strong together.

Jackie looked down at Steven’s sleeping form, smiling a little at the innocent look to him. He always had this sort of aged look to him, a sort of “been there, done it all” thing that infused his aura. But when he was sleeping, all of that went away. And she could see him for who he was, the man she had loved and desired above all others. The man who had snatched her heart when she had been between Michael episodes and hadn’t ever really given it back.

Steven made a small sound in his sleep, a sort of half-moan mixed in with something that sounded like a word that she couldn’t quite make out. She grinned, wondering if he would talk in his sleep. She had forgotten that he would do that in the dead of night, with his arms wrapped tightly around her as they slept on his cot together.

One of the few times he had ever voiced out loud that he loved her had been in his sleep. While she would have preferred to have had him awake, she had understood that it was hard for him to say things like that aloud, to open himself so completely to another human being.

That was why, after a few months of thinking on it, she had understood why he had said and done the things he had the night he had driven her from the basement forever. Steven was the kind of person who would wear his prickly pear persona to the detriment of everyone and everything if only to keep himself safe from what he saw as the inevitable conclusion to a relationship: hurt, sorrow, grief.

She used to hate the fact that he wouldn’t say those things to her. As she looked back on it over the last few years, she could see where she had made her mistakes. She could even understand that it was her fear of being left behind, of being forgotten, of being unlovable that had led to their downfall. Just like with Steven, she was a byproduct of her parents’ neglect. In Steven, it had manifested in his need to shove everyone away from him; in her case, it left her with a constant need to be reassured that she was loved and wanted.

The two of them were both the byproduct of their messed up childhoods. She had been abandoned over and over again and so had Steven. That was something that had managed to draw them together. They had both understood the other in a way that no one else in their group of friends could get. As their relationship continued, they had managed to fix the cracks of one another’s veneers. Maybe if she hadn’t pushed, they could have kept helping each other to grow in better and healthier ways.

Even as Jackie contemplated the demise of her relationship with her husband, she found herself looking forward to rebuilding her relationship with Steven. The pain and hurt of her relationship with Nick was immaterial. The future was the important part. Sure, she had suffered. She knew that. She felt that. She understood that.

But it was the knowledge and ideal that Steven would be there every step of the way, holding her hand and helping her just as he had in the past to help build herself up, was enough to make her want to press forward, to make her want to reach the goal of divorcing herself from her ex-husband. She could see the dawn on the horizon and it spoke of a beautiful beginning ahead of her.

The horror of her life was gone and over with. In its place was the possibility of something new and old at the same time. She had to admit that, maybe, if she hadn’t gone to California, maybe if she hadn’t married Nick in the first place, she wouldn’t be given the chance to reconcile with Steven. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to remember what a love that burned the bad from her soul and replaced it with good felt like.


	21. sinister purpose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmares are the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning alcoholism.

Jackie came awake with a gasp, a scream barreling up her throat as she sat bolt upright in bed. She pressed her hand to her chest, feeling her heart rate racing beneath her fingertips. It felt like her heart was trying to escape, to punch out of the walls of her ribcage to run as far away as it possibly could. The darkness of Steven’s room was absolute; it toyed with her and for a moment, she was back in the midst of her nightmare instead of awake and alive.

The scream that had buried itself in her throat tried to escape. She clenched her teeth tightly together, listening to them clack together as she swore to herself that she wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t give Nick the satisfaction of screaming. Even as she tried to bury the rabid screeches clawing at her throat, a single hint of her horror escaped in the form of a groan. _I’m awake_ , she shouted in the shelter of her own mind and the darkness resolved itself to show the chair across from Steven’s bed and the small table beside it.

Beside her, she felt Steven scrambling into a sitting position beside her. One hand reached out, touching her shoulder uncertainly. She shuddered at the touch, trying to tell her body that this wasn’t her husband. The man beside her was the man who was helping her to save herself. She shuddered again as the push of her emotions became too much and she felt the wetness of tears on her cheeks.

“Jackie, baby,” Steven asked uncertainly. “Baby, are you okay?”

Steven pulled her into his arms, not sure what had caused such a reaction. They had stumbled into his bedroom, bleary-eyed and exhausted, hours earlier. They had both almost immediately fallen asleep, Steven following Jackie into whatever dreams their minds decided they would be gifted with. He had been dreaming about a giant horse, not unlike one of the giant Budweiser horses, racing through a field. He had been trying to catch it for some reason.

He remembered the long nights after he had sent her packing, the types of dreams he had had before he had turned to the bottle to keep them at bay. He could only imagine what horror her mind had conjured up for her and he wished there was some way he could fix it. He had tried to tell Eric once about his nightmares before he had started drinking more; it hadn’t helped. Would talking about it help Jackie? She used to like to talk about these things at any rate.

Jackie closed her eyes, pressing her fingers against her eyes. She shuddered again as images from her nightmare slammed against the darkness behind her eyes. She could still feel Nick’s fingers around her throat. He had been watching her almost like a scientist studying an animal in an experiment as she lay dying beneath him. Jackie shook her head at the images and gasped, trying to force words past the scream that had lodged itself in her throat. But all she could feel was the terror from her nightmare, pushing down on her.

She gritted her teeth tightly, telling herself that she wouldn’t let her future ex-husband win. She was going to get past this; she had _left him_. She was going to _win_. He wasn’t in this room. He wasn’t nearby and he certainly _was not going to win_. With that mantra pounding her head, she was finally able to croak: “Lights. I need light.”

Steven moved on the bed, bouncing her slightly as he leaned over to the bedside table to light the scented candles he kept there. When all of them were lit, he moved back to her side, wrapping a comforting arm around her shoulders. He turned her face slightly so that he could take a good look at her, to gauge and decide how best to calm her down.

Her eyes were wide and staring, both hands now covering her heart. She was panting still as she tried to calm down. As he watched, she looked up at him with her wide, terrified eyes. His concern for her doubled as her eyes latched onto his. “I-is that enough light, Jackie? I can turn on the overhead if you need more light.”

No matter how awful his own horror stories had been before he had turned to the bottle, he felt that they were a pale comparison to whatever it was that Jackie had just gone through. She looked like the woman standing in his doorway, scrunched in on herself as she waited for blows to rain down upon her when he had pulled her back towards him before her lies had crumbled around her. The terror on her face was real. He couldn’t help but wonder if she had relived a moment in her life or if her mind had conjured up some fresh new hell to torture her with.

“Do you need me to turn on the overhead?” He asked again when she still hadn’t answered him.

Finally, she shook her head at him, a series of jerky movements as she finally responded.

The idea of him turning on the light was horrifying. He would have to let her go and she had started to feel just a little bit grounded with his arm around her. She looked into his eyes and saw the compassion there. Unable to stand it, she buried her face in his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him as tightly as she could. She wanted to melt into him, to hide inside him because she was sure the snippets of her life with Nick couldn’t follow her if she hid there.

Steven was pure and good and kind and loving. He was everything that Nick wasn’t. He was proving over and over again that he was a man willing to do what it took. He would help her in whatever way he could, to help her get back to where she needed to be. Nick was the kind of man who was willing to tread on the heads of others to get what he wanted. He would make others suffer as he stepped on them. They were barely even the same species.

Jackie tried to tighten her grip on him again, wanting to feel that much closer to Steven. She needed to feel him holding her, comforting her. She needed to feel the weight of him pressed against her, to remind her body what reality was.

 _This_ was real. The feel of Steven beside her, the scent of him in her nostrils. The touch of his hands on her back as he murmured nonsense words in her ears, rocking her against him. She could feel her heart rate beginning to slow as she reminded herself that she had managed to take the first steps to freeing herself from her abusive husband.

Steven pulled Jackie even tighter in his arms, wrapping her in a bear hug. He could still feel the rapid beat of her heart flapping against her ribcage. He wasn’t sure what she had been dreaming about, but it was enough to render her mute. When she had finally spoken, it was like she was trying not to scream. Steven closed his eyes as he rocked her gently against him, trying to impart some form of calm over her.

As he rocked her, she began to shiver and shake against him. He reached around her to pull the spare blanket from the foot of the bed to wrap around her shoulders. He adjusted the blanket around her, making sure that she was completely covered before he wrapped himself around her again. “Hush, Jackie,” he murmured into her hair. “You’re all right. It’s all right.”

He lowered his head so that he could look into her eyes. They were still wide, but the fear that had made them shiny had started to fade.

She continued to shiver against him, trying to keep her heart from pounding out of her chest. The terror of her nightmare was starting to fade but she could still feel Nick’s fingers around her neck. She shuddered again and swallowed convulsively to make sure that she could still breathe, could still speak. She was almost positive that she could still scream if she needed to. “S-Steven, j-j-just hold m-me,” she stuttered against his neck.

He pulled her in tightly again, pressing his chin against the top of her head as he rocked her back and forth. Her breathing still came in gasps and her shivering intensified as he held her. Slowly, he lowered them both to his bed, pulling the blankets up and around her so that he could warm her even while he comforted her. She slid into the shelter of his arms and kept her face pressed into his neck. He could feel the telltale trickle of wetness as she cried quietly.

“You’re safe now,” he murmured, hoping that she would stop crying. If she kept crying, he wasn’t sure what sort of stupid thing he would do but it would be something that Red would get pissed off over, he was sure.

He wanted desperately to hurt something; he wanted to break someone. He wanted to hit Nick’s face over and over again until there was nothing left of him. The bastard deserved so much worse. He deserved suffering the likes of which no one had ever before felt for doing what he had done to his Jackie. “I’ve got you.”

“T-t-talk to m-me, Steven,” she whispered into the shelter of his neck. “I j-j-just n-n-need to hear your v-voice.”

Steven lay there, trying to wrack his mind for an appropriate thing to say. He recognized that he could say anything he wanted to; all she was looking for was something to fill the silence. Before he knew it, he was telling her stories about his trips to Chicago in the last few months to spend time with his god-daughter. She seemed like just the bastion of light and innocence to dispel whatever negativity was still hiding in Jackie’s mind.

He hadn’t really considered getting to know Betsy before. And if he had still been in the bottle the way he had once been, Michael and Brooke wouldn’t have let him. But after he had sobered up, he had realized that he had failed the little girl, and his best friend really, for years. He had asked Michael after his sixth month sober if he could come down, come to meet Betsy and to spend time with his best friend. He had been shocked when Michael had agreed wholeheartedly.

Knowing what a failure he had been, he had done what he could to make it up to all three of them. He found that Brooke was an excellent match for Michael, keeping his wild and zanier plans off the menu while letting Michael get some of his ridiculousness out. He had been shocked to realize how enchanted he was with the little girl, unable to help it when he realized that she had him wrapped around her little fingers after only an hour really of knowing her.

As he told Jackie about the last time he had been to Chicago, he couldn’t believe he was really telling her about the Princess Tea Party that he had attended. If he had told himself back in high school that one day, he would be forced to go to a tea party with stuffed bears, Michael, and Eric all in attendance, he would have punched his future self in the face for the lie. But he had indeed been coerced into the Princess Tea Party. As he and his friends pretended to sip fake tea out of tiny pink and blue teacups, he had been amazed that this was something he had been missing out on.

Somehow, he had managed to get Jackie laughing at the imagery. He felt pleased with himself as he moved on the bed so that he could lie beside her, watching as she giggled. “I’m really going to have to meet this little girl,” she said finally. “I mean, if she can get the three of you to attend a Princess Tea Party, then she’s aces in my book.”

He smiled at the picture: Jackie sitting at the tiny little white table in the little girl’s bedroom, a child-sized teacup in her hand with her pinky sticking out just so. He had little doubt that the two of them would probably get along very well.

Jackie’s expression turned serious as her thoughts moved back to the terror of her nightmare. Before she could stop herself from asking, she whispered, “Steven? What do you do when you’re scared?”

“When I’m scared?” He asked, startled by the question. “I repeat the Twelve Steps.”

“Twelve what?” She asked, confused.

“You know? The Twelve Steps; A.A.” Her brows furrowed up at him. “Alcoholics Anonymous?”

Jackie frowned, startled by the revelation. “You’re in AA?” She felt foolish for not realizing. She hadn’t been back for long but in all the time they had been together, Steven hadn’t taken a single drink of anything alcoholic. In high school, he had always had a beer in hand it seemed. But she couldn’t think of a single instance in the last few days where he had had anything other than a soda, milk, or water.

“Yeah… it, well.” He stopped, trying to figure out if this was really the right time to tell her what had happened. He knew now, or at least had a general idea, of what Jackie’s life had been like for the last three years. But they hadn’t had time for him to tell her what he had gone through. And he didn’t want her to know, not really. He could admit that he wanted to appear strong and capable when he had so very obviously been neither after he had pushed her into leaving. “Do you really want to hear this now? I mean… we can talk about this later.”

She leaned up on an elbow so that she could look down at him. He was clearly uncomfortable, but she needed to understand. What had driven Steven to AA? “You know how awful things were for me, I figure it’s about time I learn a thing or two about you,” she said quietly. “But if you’d rather not tell me, I can wait.” She hadn’t had a choice in the telling of her secrets, but she didn’t want to force Steven into something he wasn’t ready for. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to tell me anything, Steven.”

“I want to tell you,” he said quietly, “but I come off like an asshole, doll. Call me crazy, but I like to come off like the good guy in front of you.”

She laughed a little and then kissed him lightly on the cheek. “You’re allowed to make mistakes, you know. We all are.” She offered him a watery smile. “I mean, obviously, I’m pretty good about making mistakes, right? I married one after all.”

“That’s… that’s not the same, baby,” he said firmly. “It’s pretty clear that he manipulated you.”

She shook her head at him. “I had doubts after he asked me to marry him,” she confessed quietly. “I mean, I didn’t think it would be like what it is… was. I didn’t think this would happen or anything, but after he asked me to marry him, I wondered if I was doing the right thing. All the waitresses from the diner thought I was because he came from money and he was obviously going to take such ‘good care’ of me.” She rolled her eyes.

“But I kind of knew I was making a mistake. I could have called it off, I think, but I didn’t.”

Steven let out a sigh. “Doll, if he didn’t want to let you go back then, he wasn’t going to let you go. You know that right?”

“Rationally? Sure,” she agreed. “But this isn’t about rationale or logic,” she explained. “I knew that I was making a mistake, and I went with it anyway. So I get mistakes, Steven. I get making them and living with the consequences.”

“You mean you’re not perfect?”

She laughed again. “I am well and truly far from perfect. You’re not perfect, either, Steven, but that’s okay. I knew you weren’t perfect back when we were dating. I knew you weren’t perfect when you were using me for sex. I knew you weren’t perfect during all of that and I still loved you for who you were. And I think that’s what love really is, you know? The person who loves you knows what your imperfections are and loves you anyway.”

Steven touched her cheek with the back of his fingers, marveling at what she was saying. He knew she had loved him when he started sleeping with her after Sam showed up on the Formans doorstep. He had seen it time and time again: when they had sniped at each other in front of their friends, when she had shown up later in the middle of the night for a quickie while Sam was stripping, when she had pulled her shirt off with rage and a burning hunger in her eyes, and of course, when he had told her that he was only using her for sex.

“I loved you,” he said softly. He leaned in and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips. “I loved you during all of that. I remember the first time I realized that I loved you and it scared me so badly, but I kept loving you. I loved you when you were being a spoiled brat. I loved you when you were pushing me to marry you. I loved you when I thought you had slept with Michael in Chicago. I loved you when you and I were fighting because of Sam. I love you, Jackie,” he said quietly.

“And when you finally left and I realized that I had fucked up that badly, I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle that you had loved me during everything and I shoved you as far away from me as possible until you finally took the hint. I couldn’t face myself in the morning or night. Looking in the mirror, I just hated myself. So I started drinking because it made it easier to look at myself in the mirror.” He shrugged a little.

“I’m sorry, Steven,” she whispered. “I should have… I should have stayed, but I was so angry. And you taunted me. You dared me a little and I was on my high horse. I couldn’t get off until I finally got to California and I realized that I wasn’t going to be an actress. So I was a waitress instead.”

He smiled. “I bet you were a great waitress,” he said.

She chuckled. “Not at first. You wouldn’t believe it, but it can be hard balancing a huge tray and also having to remember all those orders. But I got better.”

“Just like you were a spoiled brat when we first started going together and became a beautiful, perfect young woman before I ruined it all.”

“We’re both guilty of it,” she said firmly. He went to protest, but she pressed her fingers to his lips to cut him off. “No, I’m right. I spent a lot of time in that first year in California thinking about it. And I realized that we were both in the wrong.

“I was wrong to try to force you to marry me just because I was scared no one really wanted me, no one really loved me. You were wrong for assuming the worst about Michael and me at every opportunity, and for Sam.”

She kissed him softly on the lips and whispered softly, “We were both wrong for what went on in our relationship. We didn’t communicate properly and that’s on both of us.” She kissed him again. “But see? Like I said: that’s what love _is_. It’s someone loving you no matter how imperfect you may be and loving you anyway.”

He couldn’t stop himself from kissing her this time even if he had wanted to. But he needed to kiss her, to love her, and to show that he still loved her. He knew that this wasn’t the best time by a long shot, but if he didn’t kiss her now, he would get stuck in what-if. He felt a thrill of excitement in his stomach as she responded.

He pulled back slowly and looked down at her. “I love you, Jackie,” he said again. “I’m sorry; I know this probably isn’t the best time. I just wanted you to know that I never really stopped.” He let out a breath. “I know you probably don’t need to hear this right now.”

“That’s not true; I need to hear this kind of thing especially right now. I don’t… Nick spent a lot of time making me feel like he was the only one who would ever love me. I know here,” she pointed to her head, “that isn’t true. But I don’t understand that here,” she pointed to her heart, “yet. So just keep telling me as much as you want, Steven.”

She took a breath and then decided to go for broke. “I think… I think I never stopped loving you too. That might sound a little weird because, well… Nick. But I never really felt like he loved me and I know he knows that I never really loved him. Our marriage was a mistake in many different senses of the word. I think I was just throwing myself into something in the hopes that I would forget about you.

“For a while it kind of worked, but you always managed to seep in somehow.” She sighed and murmured so softly that he could barely hear her: “I love you too Steven. And I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to realize that.”

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her again, this time infusing it with more passion. He needed to show her that he loved her, that it had always been her. His heart was racing at the idea that she loved him. He thought he could fly. He was pretty sure if he jumped off the roof right that minute, then he’d float to the ground. Maybe this was what Heaven felt like.

Jackie returned his kisses, shutting down the voice in her head that was shouting about being like her mother. The little voice didn’t mean anything, had nothing to do with this moment. She needed to feel loved, cared for. And Steven wasn’t as good at words as he was at gestures. As one of his hands gently clasped her face, she slid her free hand down his arm, clutching at his wrist.

When he pulled back, she swallowed down her desire. She wanted him. Steven had always only needed to give her a little look, a chaste kiss, a light touch of fingers before she found herself wet and ready. She cleared her throat and pulled back a little to give herself room to breathe. To calm her raging hormones, she said: “I think I should let you sleep. I believe you have work in the morning.”

Steven grinned at her attempt to keep their clothes on. “You’re right, doll,” he assured her with a gentle kiss of her nose. “Would you be okay if I blew out the candles?”

Jackie thought about the question seriously, envisioning the darkness that she had woken up to. When her heart only gave her a little flip flop in response, she nodded. “Yes, as long as you promise to hold me.”

“Wild horses couldn’t stop me,” he replied.

**Author's Note:**

> We can all agree that we despise season 8. I'm sticking to that a bit, but will diverge slightly from canon in progressive chapters.


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